Episode 474: Kathy Kirchner on Service Assurance, AI Adoption, and Fiber Resilience

This episode of The Broadband Bunch features host Pete Pizzutillo in conversation with Kathy Kirchner, Senior Vice President of Service Assurance at Zayo. Kathy shares her journey from a Sprint call center to leading service assurance for one of North America’s largest fiber networks, with career stops spanning independent telcos, cable operators, Comcast, and startups. Her cross-functional experience in operations, engineering, customer care, logistics, and sales shapes how she approaches service quality and customer experience today. Kathy dives into the realities of running a large, acquisition-heavy network: data integrity challenges, documentation gaps, fiber cuts, and the quest for faster, cleaner integrations. She explains how Zayo is using automation and AI differently—automating workflows like dispatch and ticketing while leveraging AI for alarm correlation, predictive maintenance, and faster RFO creation. Along the way, she talks about building a “single pane of glass” for operations, preparing for AI data center and long-haul demand, empowering teams with shared accountability, and offers practical advice for women pursuing leadership in technology.