New research highlights the vital role of rural broadband infrastructure in supporting national goals for AI innovation, energy resilience, and economic development

The Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) today released a new paper, Opportunities for Rural Providers in the Age of Distributed AI and Edge Compute, outlining how rural internet service providers (ISPs) and electric cooperatives can tap into a fast-growing market opportunity by repurposing their existing assets—fiber, substations, and real estate—to support the nation’s expanding need for edge computing and data center capacity.

This latest analysis from FBA emphasizes that while national attention has focused on broadband deployment, the next wave of infrastructure investment will center on where and how data is processed—and rural communities can play a critical role in that future. The paper explains how the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud applications, and data-intensive workloads is reshaping the data center landscape and creating new demand for power and connectivity in non-traditional markets. With available land, community trust, and robust local fiber networks, rural providers are uniquely positioned to meet these needs.

"Rural broadband providers have quietly built the infrastructure and community trust that now make them essential to the next phase of America’s digital evolution,” said Deborah Kish, Vice President of Research and Workforce Development at the Fiber Broadband Association. "As edge computing and AI reshape how and where data moves, this paper offers a roadmap for turning those assets into economic opportunity and community benefit.”

FBA’s paper serves as both a roadmap and a call to action, encouraging regional collaboration to create shared power and fiber networks capable of supporting the next generation of digital infrastructure. The report details:

• Market trends driving the shift from centralized to distributed computing and the growing strain on power availability in traditional data center hubs.
• Business models rural ISPs and cooperatives can adopt—from colocation and rack leasing to GPU and edge AI services—and how each aligns with their existing strengths.
• Practical steps for evaluating local resources such as power capacity, fiber routes, and real estate to prepare for partnerships with hyperscale and enterprise customers.
• Community benefits, including job creation, rate stability for electric cooperatives, and improved use of renewable resources to support grid reliability.

The full paper, Opportunities for Rural Providers in the Age of Distributed AI and Edge Compute, is available for download here. Subscribe to the Fiber Forward weekly newsletter for the latest insights and events.

About the Fiber Broadband Association

The Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) is the voice of fiber, helping providers, policy makers, and communities make informed decisions about how, where, and why to build better fiber broadband networks. FBA is the largest and only trade association that represents the complete fiber ecosystem of service providers, manufacturers, industry experts, and deployment specialists. Since 2001, FBA and its members have worked to advance fiber broadband deployment to accelerate innovation and increase quality of life by enabling every community to leverage the economic and societal benefits that only fiber can deliver. The Fiber Broadband Association is part of the Fibre Council Global Alliance, which is a platform of six global FTTH Councils in North America, LATAM, Europe, MENA, APAC, and South Africa. Learn more at fiberbroadband.org.

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