I wrote two long pieces today, while RCR’s Defense Communications Forum ran in the background. Really, the forum is the thing, but we will write about that tomorrow etc. Of the others, both were interesting. Let’s go one by one. First up: Verizon and its big AI summer. This latest round of telco quarterlies shows, very clearly, the shift in the market; it was telegraphed very well in AT&T’s scores; it was there in Nokia’s, too; even in Ericsson’s. But maybe Verizon’s is the clearest signal yet; certainly the commentary on its earnings call made it so – that AI is no longer just bolted onto the network. It is becoming the network logic itself, from optimisation to service to security. Which pushes telcos further into platform thinking, of course.
For Verizon, already, there is a first-mover advantage to this – as perceived in its winter results, as projected in its summer activities. It shows up in its efficiency (along with its job cuts), performance, and capability. There are probably some questions about how durable that advantage is. Because if every major operator is building on the same cloud/edge stack, using the same models and vendors to solve the same problems, then “AI at scale” becomes table stakes pretty quickly. By which point, by 2028/29, it is less of a selling point and more like a cost just to stay competitive. At which point, it really does come down to services and sectors, which comes down to assets and knowhow. Where we were then.
Which is an adjacent discussion to the one about sovereignty, or actually about operational resiliency for telcos and their enterprise customers – per the second story, as told by BT Business. As enterprise AI grows critical and geopolitics grows ugly, resiliency becomes a calling-card service for telcos, which might just distinguish them in a patchy field of trust and transparency. It is another service, effectively. For BT, sovereignty is not about isolationism, but about keeping the lights on – when everything else fails; it is about controlling the ultimate back-up “off-switch” in a local jurisdiction in a multi-cloud active-active architecture. It collapses geopolitical language into telco design – and makes continuity, at least, a differentiating play.
James Blackman
Executive Editor
RCR Wireless News
RCR Top Stories
Summer of AI: Verizon will follow strong quarterly growth this winter with a summer of AI, with a brand new tech stack to drive further network automation and customer (micro-) segmentation to drive costs, service, and telco change.
The kill switch: BT has reframed the sovereignty debate: data sovereignty is largely secured, tech sovereignty is unrealistic, and operational sovereignty is about resilience, he said – about who controls the “off switch” when systems fail.
NTN for 6G: As the telecom industry moves toward 6G commercialization in 2029, Qualcomm is to make non-terrestrial networks a foundational part of the future system rather than a niche extension of terrestrial network coverage.
ZTE leans into AI: Chinese vendor ZTE’s computing business now accounts for over a quarter of revenue, showing a shift toward AI infrastructure as international growth helps offset weaker spending in the domestic telecommunications market.
NASA digital twin: NASA is using digital twin tech from Synopsys to simulate lunar terrain, antennas, and connectivity – to design and validate a future Moon network and mission systems before deploying physical infrastructure.
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Beyond the Headlines
Offshore AI DCs: Asset manager Keppel is building a 25MW floating data center in Singapore, targeting land and resource constraints while securing hyperscale demand and advancing alternative infrastructure models for future capacity growth.
Telco AI tactics: At FutureNet World, Rakuten and Telus pushed for bold AI-led reinvention, while BT and Orange argued for a measured evolution. But a shared strategy is taking shape, with a message: don’t just sell connectivity, they said.
Telco AI infra: Telcos BT and Orange outlined platform-led, partner-driven models at FutureNet World, while Telus and Rakuten pressed for faster moves into AI-led solutions and infrastructure plays like GPU as-a-service.
Quantum switch: Current quantum computers don’t generate enough qubits to address the class of complex problems quantum computing is designed to solve. Cisco is getting ahead of this future constraint with a new switch.
TPU S-series: Google has new AI chips: the TPU 8t for training, with the Virgo Network topology to scale up to 1 million chips, and TPU 8i for inference, which triples on-chip SRAM to reduce latency for AI agents.
What We’re Reading
Canadian subsea: Canada is reassessing its subsea infrastructure after rising US tensions have exposed heavy reliance on US-routed data and undersea cables. Officials are exploring diversifying networks and boosting sovereignty.
Telenor goes steady: Telenor reported a steady Q1, with a strong digital infra focus and weaker conditions in Asia. Its business in Bangladesh was pressured by macroeconomic issues and indirect energy supply disruptions linked to the Iran war.
Mind the gap: Boldyn, EE, and TfL are to deploy the UK emergency services network on the Tube, giving first responders reliable underground connectivity for faster access to live data, improving response times and coordination.
Local AI workloads: Microsoft is expanding its sovereign private cloud by scaling Azure Local to support thousands of servers in single environments for firms to run large AI workloads locally while maintaining control of compliance and operations.
Cellular IoT traffic: Data from cellular IoT devices will surge to 218.6 exabytes by 2035, driven mainly by automotive, transport, and logistics use cases, as well as emerging applications like remote vision and AI-enabled machine connectivity.
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