Everyone in telecoms knows this – or everyone in telecoms says the same thing, at least. There is nothing new here; and yet an open letter from Lumen chief executive Kate Johnson yesterday (April 13) to “fellow CEOs” captures very well the urgent mood in the telecoms industry to reimagine itself for the AI era – and to shout about it. The same message was trumpeted at PTC, MWC, GTC, and everywhere in between: that connectivity is king – type of thing. Or that connectivity is critical, anyway, and maybe even cool again. Certainly, it ain’t boring anymore. 

In truth, it has been the same message forever, since way before the levee broke in late 2025 / early 2026 – when infrastructure investments skewed towards hyperscale compute and interconnect, enterprise strategies gambled on agentic automation, and global geopolitics went kersplat, raising sovereignty and localisation up the new techno-nationalism agenda. This industry has been trying to reinvent itself for a decade, at least; the difference now is it is presented with a golden opportunity, in the fractured form of this thing called AI.

The “competitiveness of our country” depends on it, writes Johnson in the letter. If only the industry can just take the chance – because “yesterday’s networks” are not up to scratch, she says. Read more in the links above and below.