Podcasts
Consolidations are trending for telecoms in 2026, but one expert says mergers can only increase operational complexity.
By Brad Randall, Broadband Communities
Consolidations and network scaling are two key trends among US telecoms in 2026, but both can increase the complexity of operations, as Patricia Kellaghan of Synamedia pointed out during her recent appearance on our Beyond the Cable podcast.
“Especially in broadband,” she said. “What you start to see with these consolidation efforts is operators are inheriting more systems, more vendors, more device types, and more silos.”
Kellaghan, who serves as Synamedia’s senior director of product management, said those are not the only pressures broadband providers are navigating these days.
As operators take on more infrastructure, their subscriber bases are also growing, leading to further operational complexities.
As a result, Kellaghan said networks need smarter tools so they can unify operations, many times with leaner teams.
Elaborating on that, she said solutions that apply visibility with intelligence can empower ISPs to address issues as they arise, without the need for long troubleshooting processes or multiple truck rolls.
How the operational complexity battle was won in Wyandotte
Working with Wyandotte Municipal Services in Michigan, a community-owned utility, Kellaghan said Synamedia’s vendor-neutral Gravity platform enabled a significant improvement in operational efficiency.
“They had proprietary systems, vendor lock-in, fragmented tools,” she said. “And very much limited visibility across their devices and services, and a lot of manual time-consuming service activations.”
Listen to the full interview with Kellaghan on Apple Podcasts
Kellaghan said the challenges were causing friction in the everyday operations of Wyandotte Municipal Services, leading them to look for more flexibility and modernization of their broadband services.
She also called the Gravity platform a unified, orchestration layer that sits above the CPE.
“That really enabled them to eliminate a lot of manual setup steps. It allowed them to streamline provisioning, reduce the swivel chair with troubleshooting, and really gave their techs and their CSRs real-time visibility into the device, but also into the fleet and network health as well.”
To hear more about how Synamedia’s Gravity platform helped elevate Wyndotte’s network to the next level, listen to the full interview with Kellaghan on Apple Podcasts.
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