Calix Will Launch Our 3rd Generation Platform, Purpose-Built for AI. We are AI-Ready. Are You?
There is a lot of talk about AI, and parsing hype from reality is difficult. Salesforce, Microsoft, and others are claiming that they are restructuring for AI. Harvard Business Review outlined five paradigms for “Reskilling in the Age of AI” as leaders work to understand AI in the context of the current business and evolving competition. Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, claimed in his TED Talk that the AI revolution is underhyped!
Underhyped? At a time when everyone seems to be referencing AI? Yes. I agreed with Schmidt on LinkedIn.
AI Will Drive Seismic Shifts in How We Define Work
AI is as profound as the introduction of electricity, the steam engine, or Ford’s assembly line. Through mass production, the assembly line sparked rapid industrialization and increased wages while spurring a consumption economy. It also changed the nature of work, moving it from complex, skilled labor that only an elite group of workers could handle, to simplified tasks that required less training but could be done faster by a multitude of workers—at scale.
AI will surpass the assembly line in impact and will drive similar seismic shifts in how we define work—reshaping job roles, availability, wages, and the post-industrial growth of our society.
Our Evolved 3rd Gen Platform Will Be Optimized for AI
As with any seismic shift, this creates a huge opportunity for those who embrace and adapt to change. At Calix, the timing of the AI wave is ideal for us. Why? We launched our 2nd generation platform at the beginning of the pandemic, enabling your teams to take advantage of that disruption. In August, we will run that playbook again by launching our 3rd generation Calix Broadband Platform, optimized for AI so your teams can dominate the markets you serve.
To be clear: AI is not a capability we are just bolting on. We have spent the past two years investing tens of millions in a strategic, integrated, and holistic approach to evolve our platform for one purpose: to maximize the value of AI so you can simplify, innovate, and grow your broadband business.
We are now ready to share more about these exciting developments with you. Put these two events on your calendar now:
- Our upcoming webinar: "Leaving the Industrial Era: Artificial Intelligence and the 3rd Generation Calix Broadband Platform" on August 6, 2025. I invite you to be part of the discussion with myself, AI and business strategist Michael Watkins, and Calix chief product officer Shane Eleniak. We will share our vision for the AI-enabled future with Calix’s 3rd generation platform.
- ConneXions 2025: “New Game, New Rules” on October 18-21. AI will dominate the dialogue, with a specific focus on transforming your business to reduce churn, grow ARPU, and win new subscribers with AI and Calix’s 3rd generation broadband platform.
Calix will again take on the Innovator’s Dilemma as we evolve our 3rd generation platform to help your teams win. We have the expertise and strategy already in motion. As ever, our goal is to make every customer wildly successful.
We are entering the most exciting, challenging, and disruptive era of our lifetimes—and it will define generations to come. For those who adapt with us, it will be filled with opportunity and growth.
I hope you will join us for a deep dive into our strategy, vision for the future, and plans to collaborate with you for your success.
If you have questions or feedback, reach out to me anytime at michael.weening@calix.com or on my LinkedIn.
Wishing you and your teams continued success,
Michael
Wynn Las Vegas Resort and Spa
ConneXions 2025
A VIP, Tailored Experience With The General Manager In Mind
Join us as we rise together to transform speed providers into experience providers at our premier annual event, taking place October 18 - 21, 2025 at the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas.
Engage with your peers, industry visionaries, design experts, marketing gurus and more at this thought-provoking conference experience.
Shane Eleniak, Chief Product Officer, Calix
In 2019, Calix launched our 2nd generation platform of appliances, software, cloud, and managed services—enabling the transformation from network operator to broadband experience provider (BXP) via these pillars:
1. Simplify network, field, and go-to-market operations.
- Simplify your network. The introduction of AXOS, the world’s only abstracted access operating system, enabled service providers to consolidate access, aggregation, subscriber management (BNG), and subscriber-facing routing functions (PE/MPLS) onto a single managed appliance—enabling a significantly simpler network that reduces power consumption by ~70% and reduces operating expenses by as much as 80% per month.
- Simplify managed Wi-Fi for consumers, MDUs, small businesses, events, and parks. Calix introduced Wi-Fi 6 and EXOS-based GigaSpire® Wi-Fi systems. This has enabled service providers to mix and match appliances to cover any physical Wi-Fi use case across all segments—eliminating the need for many vendors.
- Simplify operations, service, and marketing. Calix Cloud provided behavioral insights and tools, enabling team members to take action that reduced truck rolls and call times, sped resolution across the network to improve reliability, and maximized the customer experience, as evidenced by so many BXPs that achieved Net Promoter Scores℠ (NPS®) as high as 92, all while providing a single operational approach to deliver and support any service, anywhere.
2. Innovate across the residential, business, MDU, and municipal segments.
- SmartLife™-enabled GigaSpire Wi-Fi systems delivered unique, secure, managed experiences to subscribers, with SmartHome™ for the consumer, SmartBiz™ for the small business, SmartMDU™ for the multi-dwelling units and the property manager, and SmartTown™ for education, first responders, and the community. This is how BXPs can grow their NPS by 32 points in just two years.
- Core to innovation is a BXP-branded mobile experience. CommandIQ® put the BXP’s brand front and center for the residential user, our Field Service App enabled the field installer to ensure that they optimized the experience, and CommandWorx provided the best experience for the small business owner.
3. Grow for investors, members, and the community. The Calix Broadband Platform enables a BXP to deliver experiences that achieve a market-leading NPS, which attracts new subscribers, reduces churn, and grows revenue at the highest margins due to operational simplicity for investors, members, and the communities they serve.
How We’re Advancing Our “Simplify, Innovate, and Grow” Mission by Leveraging AI
Our mission remains the same: Simplify and innovate to enable broadband providers of all sizes to grow for investors, members, and the communities they serve. How we achieve that mission is what has changed, thanks to our 3rd generation platform that will be purpose-built to leverage AI.
We will simplify transitions through insights derived from our software and cloud, enabling employees to act on the end-to-end automation of those tasks. This automation is enabled by rich agentic AI—a knowledge layer that can see the unmet needs of subscribers and the complex events of day-to-day operations and support. It is also built with a trust framework to make sure that security and privacy are always at the forefront of every action. This allows AI to act autonomously and seamlessly across operations, service, and marketing.
At the same time, our 3rd generation will see Calix optimize across the platform based on our six years of learning with customers and partners. A simple example: our Wi-Fi 7 GigaSpire portfolio has been streamlined from 25 to 10 appliances, covering Wi-Fi use cases in residential, small and medium businesses, MDUs, events, and parks.
Innovate transitions as our next-generation platform will accelerate our ability to meet new BXP-identified use cases for new segments. We will expand the capabilities of our SmartLife™ portfolio, launch our 3rd generation mobile app (slated for release in August), while expanding BXP capabilities with ManagedBiz™ to meet the security and connectivity needs of medium-sized businesses.
Together, we will simplify and innovate within our 3rd generation cloud to unleash a new level of knowledge, productivity, and success—enabling even the smallest BXP to GROW in the communities they serve.
The world is about to change with AI, and Calix customers will be the winners during that change.
Follow me on LinkedIn where I share insights at the intersection of AI, product innovation, and leadership—especially as they shape the future of broadband and drive industry transformation.
John Durocher, Chief Customer Officer, Calix
First, eero claimed the living room.
Now, they’re targeting the patio, the playset, and your customer’s backyard—with an outdoor mesh unit that shows Amazon’s ambition isn’t just to help connect homes… it’s to own the entire home network.
If you’re still selling third-party systems—or worse, letting Amazon define your subscribers’ experience—you’re ceding the front line of your business.
That’s why outdoor Wi-Fi isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a competitive imperative.
With your branded outdoor solution, you do more than match eero. You out-position it:
- With local expertise: site-optimized installs tailored to actual properties
- With proactive support: anticipating subscriber setup questions and preferences
- With a unified experience: one network, one app, one provider
- And with smart home integration that works across the yard, barn, gate, or garage
Amazon/eero does not care who plugs in the Ethernet jack and answers support calls. They only care about Amazon-delivered experiences and how much subscribers will love them—which is already reflected in their Net Promoter Score℠ (NPS®). If Amazon Prime offered a broadband service, 44% of rural subscribers would consider it. This is a Trojan horse on your network.
You need a partner who can help you win this fight. Calix has spent 26 years helping BSPs evolve into broadband experience providers. Our 3rd generation platform will exist for one reason: to help you crush eero—and anyone else trying to own your subscriber relationships.
If you haven’t yet launched our industry-leading outdoor GigaSpire® systems—do it now. You’ll grow ARPU by $10–$30 and boost NPS. My Wi-Fi works flawlessly in my garage and by the pool. Your subscribers deserve that, too.
Let’s make sure you are the face of broadband in your community and that you own experiences like outdoor Wi-Fi—not Amazon. Click here to deepen your engagement with Calix today.
Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.