The real battle in broadband is not speed it is loyalty

In broadband, better speeds alone are no longer enough to win.

In this episode of Connected Nation, Calix’s Teresa McGaughey explains how service providers are shifting their focus to customer experience, retention, and smarter operations. The conversation explores how AI driven platforms, targeted marketing, and automation can help providers reduce churn and compete in an increasingly crowded market.

Related links:
Calix's website

Company's LinkedIn

Teresa McGaughey's LinkedIn 

Transcript

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Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (00:07):

This is Connected Nation, an award-winning podcast focused on all things broadband. From closing the digital divide to improving your internet speeds, we talk technology topics that impact all of us, our families, and our neighborhoods.

(00:22):

 On this episode of Connected Nation, I talk with leadership from Calix. We discuss their big announcement regarding 50G Pawn. Find out what that's all about, plus they share how they're helping customers reduce churn and the unique approach they use for developing an AI playbook.

(00:40):

I'm Jessica Denson and this is Connected Nation. I'm at Fiber Connect 2026, taking place in Orlando, Florida, May 17th through the 20th, and I am sitting with Teresa McGaughey. Did I do it right? Yes. I love that last name. Uh, vi- vice president of field and partner marketing for Calix. Um, welcome Teresa. Well,

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (01:02):

Thank you very much. Yeah. Happy to join you.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (01:05):

<laugh> I've been to the Calix conference, so it's fun to ha- to see you guys at something. Um, you had a great booth. I was able to just sort of peruse it very quickly. Um, any great conversations you're having, you've been having this weekend?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (01:17):

You know, we've been having lots of great conversations. So some of the couple of, you know, really top ones that I think are striking the nerve, uh, are, um, folks around, you know, AI, it's the topic everywhere. So we're hearing lots about AI, but really it comes down to how are we co- companies like ourselves able to help service providers really run their business. So what are the outcomes that AI is gonna achieve? Not necessarily just the fact that you deploy AI for AI's sake. You know, so we focus on how can we help them from a operations perspective, a service perspective, marketing, you know, those are the, some, some of the many things that we're really focused on. Mm-hmm.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (01:56):

Um, I mentioned the CALIX  Conference and it's Calix Connections Innovation and Customer Success Conference and it's going to be held in Vegas this year, October 17th through the 20th. And I've had the pleasure of going the last two years and it's just pretty amazing what you guys do. You put a whole town hall, town, like almost an entire town together in the little expo hall. Um, you have comedians, we talked about it a little bit. <laugh> Uh, what, can we people look forward to this year?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (02:22):

Oh my goodness. So every year we always look to do more than what we've stepped up from the year before. But, you know, think about it. One of the things that we're focused on with service providers is to help them from an experience perspective to make sure their subscribers get an amazing experience. Well, okay, we have to drink our own Kool-Aid. <laugh> Yeah. So it's all about making sure our service providers, when they come join us, have a great experience and really learn. And so, you know, some of the new things you can imagine will be how more agents come out as far as our, uh, agent workforce cloud, but also how do we take and help them make that real? Mm-hmm. You know, how do we help them grow their business? How do we help them make sure their subscribers are having that amazing experience? So you can imagine we've got a lot of brains going on to figure out what's coming up next.

(03:14):

Uh,

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (03:14):

I'm excited. It's, it's a, it's a big conference. It's a neat conference. I can imagine that a lot of your customers walk away learning a lot because I've been in that, that hall and I've been in some of the sessions and it's pretty amazing. So let's move on to what Calix is doing. You're doing some really cool things. Um, you put out a re- press release recently about your 50 gig pawn. Talk about what that is and why that's a big deal.

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (03:37):

Yeah. So Calix, uh, as, you know, we're deploying 50 gig pond and the press release was about how Allo and Brightspeed are, you know, adopting and moving forward. Um, but it's not about 50 gig pond because everybody can do 50 gig pawn. It's a technology, it's built on a standard ship set, it's a standards-based technology. It's about how we bring it together as a solution, again, on our AI native platform to, to enable service providers to be able to deploy not only the service, but to deploy it at a high quality for, and be able to ultimately, you know, deliver the end results that they're hoping to achieve.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (04:17):

Mm-hmm. And, um, s- the organizations that you just mentioned that are, are picking up Citi Fiber is named in the release and they've upgraded nearly f- five million UK premises with Calix and are calling out ... I'm just reading from your press release, are, are calling out from your 50G pond is the next chapter of that partnership. Also, you mentioned Allo and Brightspeed with the North American trials. Mm-hmm. So is UK ahead of us a little bit <laugh> or are we just, is it just the way that the, the different ecosystems are?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (04:51):

Well, it, I mean, 50 gig pond is about the use case. Mm-hmm. So look at the use case that different companies are use, are, are really focused on Citi Fiber is an open access network and looking to deploy lots and lots of subscribers from many other ISPs. And so they have some interesting use cases that help them- Uh-huh. ... from a deployment perspective. And in the US, the use cases are maybe similar but not quite the same. Mm-hmm. And so, no, I don't know that I'd say they're necessarily further along. It's just different.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (05:23):

It's just a different kind of-

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (05:25):

Yeah.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (05:25):

... approach. Got it. And, um, for Allo and Brightspeed, how are they using it at this point?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (05:31):

So most of the use cases that we see for 50 gig pawn are a combination of network slicing and getting true 10 gig bandwidth. So, you know, with the ponds that we have today, you know, if you're deploying a 10 gig pond, you can't get 10 gig of bandwidth. We all know that you have overhead. So with 50 gig pond, you can certainly do a true 10 gig. But in, in addition to that, it's, I, I think I mentioned network slicing. So taking and putting a, you know, aggregating all of your services onto a single network so that you can manage everything as one. So business, you know, your mobile back haul, your mobile networks, you know, all, and your residential onto a single aggregated network, yet separate from a logical perspective.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (06:14):

Mm-hmm, gotcha. So, uh, you're the VP of field and partner marketing, but you, you have a lot, you, you really understand the technology here, huh? <laugh>

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (06:22):

Yeah. Do you have a

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (06:23):

Background in engineering or-

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (06:24):

I do. So my background, I've been in the industry now for almost 30 years- Uh-huh. ... which is, um, I'm dating myself definitely. <laugh> It's all right. Yeah. <laugh> But I've been at Calix almost 20. When I joined Calix, I was in product management. Uh-huh. So I started in software design before that. Um, so as product management, I came in and was really working with our teams to define what ultimately became the E7 solution. So it's a product that is still defined in our market and still being used very heavily. It's what has the 50 gig pond solution on it now today. That's very cool. That's kind of cool. So I've made, over the course of many years, a transition to different roles within the company. Mm-hmm. Um, including, you know, so sales. I did that for a couple years internationally, which was really exciting.

(07:10):

And then, um, you know, moving into marketing. Mm-hmm. So, and honestly, I'll just let the cat out of the bag here. The title I gave you is the title I'm using here at the show because I'm, but I'm really rolling off onto a new role- Oh. ... um, right after this, which will be, um, VP of product success and incident management and to some extent that brings me back to my roots- Yeah. ... of product management and the details, you know, really getting into that area. So yeah.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (07:35):

Yeah, you heard it here. It's exclusive. Yeah.

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (07:37):

<laugh> There you go. There you go. Um,

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (07:39):

So that's interesting incident management. So what will that role entail?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (07:44):

Well, think about it. So we have a cloud solution that our service providers are very reliant on to ensure that they can do their business. So we have to make sure we have all of our I's dotted and all of our Ts crossed so that we can keep them running at a high quality or get them back up and running as fast as absolutely possible. So definitely a critical role- Uh-huh. ... and something that we take very seriously.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (08:11):

So do you think that your, the background that you have where you've been at Calix  for so long and have been different roles, you might have this ability to identify something that perhaps somebody who only had one part of the company, you know, where is that whole thing with the elephant, you see the tail and not the, the trunk, but you can maybe see a little bit more?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (08:30):

I definitely would say I have insights across the company. I've spent an combination of my marketing role as well as my product management role I have a lot of the overarching view. I talk to customers on a regular basis, and I am here at this conference, as a matter of fact, you know, talking to a lot of customers, hearing what they have to say as well, so understanding their needs. So you put it all together and yeah, I think that over, through that, I have a lot of good insight that can really help bring value to that role. Hence the reason I'm in it.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (09:01):

<laugh> Yeah. You'll have to let me know how it goes.

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (09:03):

I will definitely.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (09:04):

Yeah. <laugh> So, uh, what are some things that you're hearing from those customers now that what are some of, do they have some similar issues, challenges or opportunities that are out there right now in the market?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (09:15):

Well, all of our customers are trying to figure out a couple of things. So once, we spent a lot of time, I was actually on a panel here yesterday around reducing churn. Mm-hmm. So how do you, I mean, com- competition in our market is very high. Yeah. And you know, it's not changing. I live in a neighborhood that has fiber and the fiber provider has now been overbuilt by another fiber provider, which makes, it's like interesting. And so how do you keep your subscribers from moving? Because as we always say, it's easier to keep them, it's more effective and more efficient than it is to have to catch, you know, get them back again. Mm-hmm. So that would be one topic that's been, been definitely high. The other is just generally how do they become more efficient at their business so that they can ultimately focus on the things that are more important, you know, again, back to that business.

(10:08):

What are your outcomes? What are you trying to achieve as an overarching business?

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (10:11):

Mm-hmm. It's, and you've mentioned, uh, Calix one and the Agent Workforce One and the fact that you were talking about the AI, uh, agent and that type of thing. Talk about what makes Calix One and Agent Workforce One. Are, are those two separate products?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (10:26):

Well, it's Calix one and Agent Workforce Cloud.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (10:28):

Oh, cloud.

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (10:29):

I'm sorry. No worries.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (10:29):

Cloud. <laugh> That's why you're the marketing person. You, you gotta correct me. Um, those are, talk about what makes those unique and, um, are those two separate products or are those work together?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (10:41):

So Calix one is our complete AI native platform and Agent Workforce Cloud is our talk about pa- you know, I mentioned agents earlier on when we were talking. So it is the culmination of our cl- agents coming together working with each other to ultimately solve problems. Think of, you know, one example I like to use is on outage notifications and outage management in general. So you can have an op- operations agent that identifies an outage that operations agent would talk to a service agent, the service agent goes, "Okay, I know these are all the subscribers that are now impacted." Talks to what we call a subscriber agent, which actually then says, "Oh, I, I need to communicate with all of these subscribers- Uh-huh. ... and this is the way they prefer to be communicated to. " And so it does that. At the meantime, there's another operation agent that has been talked to and says, "Okay, I figured out what I need to do, and that is, I need to get a truck rolling." So they send a truck out.

(11:47):

So it's pulling together that entire solution so that our customers can have the fastest time to repair and the best communication to their subscribers, because we all know when we're communicated to, we actually are more comfortable.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (12:03):

Oh, 100%. 100%. And it's interesting, I would think, especially for some of this, the tier two or tier three providers, the smaller providers, that that would just be, uh, yeah, you could make my workforce exponential with that type of thing, right? Are they really finding that?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (12:20):

Absolutely. So definitely finding that. And another good example in that same area is one of the other areas we have an agent, have agents is marketing. Mm-hmm. And a lot of the tier threes, especially they, I, I took a poll actually the other day, um, marketing people, how many are in your company? Oh, not 10, not five, maybe on. And, but they have to do marketing. They have to be able to compete against satellite providers, other wire, wire fiber providers, et cetera. And so with an agent that can go and identify the campaigns, identify the target subscribers, they're gonna ultimately be able to have marketing- mm-hmm. ... in their company and start to enable targeted campaigns much more efficiently than they've ever been able to do before.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (13:09):

Yeah, that's, I would think that the, for some, the small, especially those small tier three, like you're talking about, that they would, that would be a godsend <laugh> because I've, I've talked to those small organizations and, um, they are mom and p- often mom and pop or they're people that have come together to get things done and they're doing, they're wearing every hat. So I can imagine that that would be, Calix would be very welcome to

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (13:35):

That table. And it's definitely, for the small ones, it's definitely important. But actually think about the large ones too- Uh-huh. ... because think about how many times you at your house have gotten some generic, um, you know, mailer- Uh-huh. ... you know, or a mailer from the service provider that you already have- Yeah, yeah. ... that says get connected to you. <laugh> You know, that kind of targeting is really critical and it can save ... I mean, I heard the number the other day that somebody was spending, it's like $150,000 a month, you know, it was a very large number. I think I've got that wrong, but it was very large number, um, per month to actually target or to send mailers out and their ROI was, you know, terrible. They got some, yeah. They got some customers, but they didn't get many. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, so actually creating targeted campaigns, regardless of whether you're large or small i- is huge- Yeah.

(14:25):

... because I will pay attention to a mailer that looks like it's been mailed to me.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (14:30):

100% rather than just you're s- the same old, same old <laugh>.

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (14:34):

Exactly.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (14:35):

So let's talk, let's expand a little bit on AI. I, I know that it, that you have this, this tool that, um, companies can use, but what is, how is Calix looking internally about how they're gonna apply, how the company uses and applies AI and advising-

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (14:52):

Mm-hmm.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (14:53):

... their customers on what's next with

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (14:55):

AI? Yeah, no, the great question. Um, so a couple of things. So I'll ask, I'll answer your last part, which was how are we advising customers? So we have an entire organization called the Customer Success Team in Calix and we've created the AI playbook. And so we will go to our customers and explain and, and walk them through how they can adopt AI smartly, securely, you know, and generate trust- mm-hmm. ... of it within their organizations. So we work with our customers through our success team to make that happen. Internally, I mean, effectively I had, I had a customer actually tell me, you know, we earned the right to do, um, customer facing AI by doing it internally first 100 times, so, um, ourselves. And I think that that is really important. And so we've been, we have adopted AI internally. We have, um, an entire, we've done a promptathon, it's like 600 agents have been created, but honestly, and this is actually tells you the, how it's working, is we have 600 agents that have been created, but we've truly only adopted into production 20 and you think, "Well, that's a really low ratio." Mm-hmm.

(16:05):

No, that's saying, let's do what makes sense, let's look at the outcome, let's utilize the ones that are really gona provide value- mm-hmm. ... and have been verified and tested well.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (16:17):

Mm-hmm. Uh, Promptathon, that's interesting, what is that?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (16:20):

So we pulled together all of our, um, employees and said, "Hey, if you wanna join, there's a promptathon, here's the rules," and they had competitions. Oh, how cool. So, and we would share, and they shared prompts, um, across and who could come up with the, you know, the coolest one, the, the, um, ones that would achieve the most, you know, results and, and things like that. And so it was a lot of fun competition that happened and we got a lot of prompts that people could then use save away for the future whenever they needed something like that.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (16:52):

For, for Calix, what are you really looking for toward the future in the next five, 10 years? Are, are you, is Calix looking at looking at data centers or looking at, um, other way, other ways to get into the market or is there anything that you could share that you guys are excited about for the future?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (17:09):

Oh, we're excited about many things. <laugh> What can I share? So- Yeah, like can you share- Yeah, what can I share? Well, one of the areas, I mean, there's a humongous opportunity in MDU so we're definitely focused with MDUs and we have a solution, our smart MDU solution which we take to, you know, both MSPs and, you know, regular CSPs and which helps them deploy within MDUs, uh, a very simple to install solution that property managers can utilize to turn up and turn down subscribers, get community, you know, wifi throughout the whole solution. Um, MDUs has been something that have been to some extent, uh, not, not well done- mm-hmm. ... through our communities, through our country and, and other places as well. And so this is, uh, a solution that really makes it simple for them to do that. So that's one area. Um, beyond that, I mean, we have many places we can, you know, expand and so continuing to look at that and our solutions, um, part of what we've done with the Calix One platform has set us up to be able to scale to the very largest providers.

(18:15):

Mm-hmm. So, you know, we're, we're ready to go.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (18:19):

What would you hope that people would take away about Calix if there was just one thing that they had to think, "Oh, okay, that's Calix."

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (18:26):

Calix isn't a vendor. Mm-hmm. We're not here to sell you a solution. We're here to make sure you, the business, the service provider are successful. So we partner with you because in the end, we can't be successful if our partners, our service providers aren't either.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (18:45):

That's a wonderful place to leave it. And again, I've been talking with Theresa Magonahy. No, did I say it wrong?

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (18:52):

Magahi.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (18:52):

Magahi. I practiced it and everything. <laugh> Theresa Magahi, VP of field and partner marketing for Calix. I really appreciate your time. It's been a pleasure

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (19:01):

Talking with

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (19:01):

You today.

Teresa McGaughey, VP, Global Field & Partner Marketing, Calix (19:02):

Thank you so much. It's been great.

Jessica Denson, Podcast Host (19:03):

Yeah. I'll continue my coverage from Fiber Connect 2026 in upcoming episodes of the Connected Nation Podcast. Until then, I'm Jessica Denson and this is Connect to Nation. If you wanna know more about us, head to connectednation.org and you can find our latest episodes on your favorite podcast platform.