The speed with which the Covid-19 pandemic took hold did not allow for network operators to lay huge amounts of extra fiber to cope with the high bandwidth spikes caused by lockdowns and work-from-home policies. Other means of coping were implemented, from calling in specialist technology suppliers to optimize traffic management, to operators rallying together to agree on widespread bit-rate reductions across streaming platforms. US cableco Comcast is one operator which turned to artificial intelligence to address the bandwidth crunch, bringing forward some of its projects to develop capacity forecasting capabilities using AI/ML above a layer of network automation features. The world’s largest cable operator is crediting its inhouse-developed Comcast Octave software for managing traffic spikes as high as 60%…