VOLUME 1 - ISSUE 19 ~ November 24, 2025
In this edition of the “CIO Two Cents” newsletter, I explore why environments dedicated to exploration and creativity are essential to fostering innovation amongst IT professionals by highlighting how Comcast’s networking team is “playgrounding” with next gen tech to give themselves an operational advantage.
— Yvette Kanouff, partner at JC2 Ventures
The JC2 Ventures team: (John J. Chambers, Shannon Pina, John T. Chambers, me, and Pankaj Patel)
(1)
IT playgrounds, where professionals freely experiment and innovate, are essential but often lacking in today's work environments.
(2)
Comcast uses quantum computing in a playground setting to solve complex challenges in network and data management.
(3)
Playgrounding with new and emerging technologies, like quantum computing, gives organizations a future edge over competitors.
I’ve always loved playgrounds, as a space dedicated to exploration and creativity. I wish we had more “IT playgrounds” where tech professionals could experiment and innovate freely. Too often, these opportunities are limited by overriding priorities, time constraints, or a simple lack of interest in ‘playing’ with new technology.
For some time now, I’ve been championing the idea that companies need to prepare for Q-Day – when quantum computers will become powerful enough to crack today’s public key encryption which secures the world’s data. Likewise, companies need to look at quantum-enabled product and technology opportunities, which is exactly what my friend and colleague Elad Nafshi, Chief Network Officer at Comcast, is doing – and he is doing it with playgrounding! Sounds like fun, right? Let’s dive in.
Optimizing AI
Elad has observed that AI can be difficult to optimize. Many, if not most, organizations are looking at use cases and implementation opportunities for AI, but Elad and his team are looking at something beyond use cases. They are looking at ways AI can help observe, analyze, and manage networks at new, exponential scales – something that is limited with current implementations and methodologies.
The World’s Largest Networks
You see, Elad and the teams at Comcast manage one of the largest networks in the world. Comcast’s network is the largest in the United States, stretching over 350,000 miles of fiber and reaching 64 million homes and businesses. It is a vast network that also includes more than 23 million public Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide. However, one of the issues with giant networks is that their complexity is exponential.
Today’s networks are more complex than ever before. They span multiple access types, support an ever growing number of devices, and cater to a variety of service level agreements and applications, across business, public, and residential environments. Each network is layered and interconnected in ways that add exponential complexity. While managing a single aspect with existing tools might be feasible, teams now face an overwhelming amount of data and complexity. In fact, the scale has surpassed the capabilities of current AI-driven and compute-driven solutions to effectively process and manage these networks.
Quantum Playground
What I love about Elad is he has seemingly endless creativity. Faced with the challenge of managing unprecedented network complexity and data volume, Elad and his team are exploring what quantum computing can do to analyze vast amounts of data. Instead of hiring a team of quantum programmers, Comcast has partnered with a quantum technology provider to get started.
There is a general belief that quantum computing will mature within three to five years. By taking action now, the Comcast team believes they are giving themselves a leg-up in operations, network scalability, and manageability, especially since network complexity does not follow a linear scale. Remember that quantum computing lends itself well to scientific challenges and large-scale, unpredictable environments, making it a compelling fit for the future of network management.
Summary
While many companies are focused on security and quantum decryption capabilities (see my past blog), Comcast is focused on crunching pedabytes of telemetry and possibly achieving unprecedented network management transformation and self-healing with quantum. I believe we should all be looking at quantum computing (and all next-gen technology) and start looking at potential implementations.
Experimenting and coming up with innovative solutions? I call that “playgrounding” – and I love it.
Image of the Moment
JC2 Ventures Partner Yvette Kanouff and Comcast EVP and Chief Network Officer Elad Nafshi
