As networks become AI-ready and platforms evolve into orchestration layers, the future of global communications is being rewritten in real time.

Last week, I had the privilege of joining BT International in Dublin for the launch of their Exchange Roadshow — the first in a global series (78 events across the globe over the next 2 years) that marks a new chapter for the company and, in many ways, for the entire industry.

The atmosphere was electric — not because of product launches or marketing hype, but because you could sense something deeper taking shape: a company redefining itself for the AI era.

On stage, Joris van Oers (MD Global), JosĂŠ Gastey (MD Strategic Partner Alliance & Marketing), and Colm Sunderland (Head of Global Hyperscale, Indirect and CPaaS) laid out a clear, unified vision: BT International is embracing its heritage of reliability and trust while evolving for speed, agility, and intelligence.

Joris spoke about purpose — the “why” behind BT International’s renewed focus — and how this carve-out creates the freedom to move faster and partner better. José emphasized partnerships and collaboration as the new growth engine, and Colm expanded on how Global Fabric will underpin that vision — an intelligent, sovereign, AI-ready network designed to connect, compute, and secure the world’s data in new ways.

Together, they painted a picture of a telco that’s not just transforming itself, but helping to transform the ecosystem around it.

The Exchange Roadshow: From Vision to Collaboration

What stood out most in Dublin was that BT didn’t position itself as the center of the story. Instead, it invited the ecosystem to help shape it.

Infobip, Fortinet, and Five9 joined the stage — each representing a vital layer in this new world of intelligent communications.

  • Infobip (Matija Razem) showcased how its long-standing partnership with BT is evolving. Just last week, they jointly announced an extended agreement under which BT will provide global voice services to Infobip — strengthening the backbone for one of the world’s leading CPaaS platforms. It’s a clear example of telcos and CPaaS providers converging to deliver smarter, AI-driven engagement at scale.
  • Fortinet (Graham Vann) brought security into the AI conversation, underscoring how intelligent systems and autonomous agents demand new models of defense. In a world where AI continuously learns, trust isn’t static — it has to evolve too.
  • Five9 (Jake Butterbaugh) connected the dots from the application layer. Fresh from their analyst summit, Five9 officially repositioned itself as an AI Contact Center platform — no longer defined by the cloud era, but by orchestration, intelligence, and adaptability.

This mix — BT’s infrastructure, Infobip’s platform reach, Fortinet’s trust, and Five9’s intelligence — created a powerful snapshot of an ecosystem in motion.

Global Fabric and the AI-Ready Network

At the heart of BT International’s strategy lies Global Fabric — a re-imagined network built for the realities of the AI era.

Traditional networks moved data. AI-ready networks respond to it. They are programmable, flexible, and intelligent, able to scale up or down, open new routes, and reconfigure in real time — without lengthy provisioning cycles or manual approvals.

This flexibility is crucial because AI workloads are dynamic by nature. Models change, data flows shift, and new services emerge overnight. A network that can adapt instantly is the difference between innovation and inertia.

But flexibility alone isn’t enough. The AI era also demands sovereignty and control. Organizations now need to determine where data travels and how it is processed — sometimes dynamically, depending on the payload or jurisdiction. In a world defined by de-globalization, privacy, and compliance, data routing itself becomes a matter of strategy.

That’s where BT’s long history in global communications becomes a true advantage. With more than a century of experience in trusted voice and regulatory compliance, BT knows how to balance openness and control. Global Fabric extends that heritage into a digital, software-defined age — embedding compliance, security, and policy enforcement directly into the network fabric.

Combined with its partnership with Google Cloud, BT’s network isn’t just faster — it’s smarter, safer, and ready for the distributed intelligence that the next decade will demand.

Beyond the Cloud: The New Role of Data Infrastructure

One of my most compelling conversations in Dublin was about how AI is reshaping the role of data centers and providing new opportunities for telcos.

For years, we built massive, centralized clouds optimized for scale. But the next phase is about proximity — bringing intelligence closer to where data lives.

Large foundation models will still be trained centrally, but the inference — the everyday execution of AI tasks — is becoming local, sovereign, and purpose-specific.

That’s why global data-center and interconnection leaders such as Digital Realty, with more than 300 data centers worldwide, are rethinking how compute and interconnection get distributed. Instead of one global AI model serving all, the future lies in smaller, tailored models running closer to users, minimizing latency and preserving data sovereignty.

This shift also highlights a massive opportunity for regional and national telcos. Many already own or operate local data-center assets, often adjacent to their network infrastructure. These operators are uniquely positioned to host AI inference models optimized for their markets — delivering secure, compliant, low-latency AI services to enterprises in their region. It’s a natural extension of their connectivity role: evolving from carriers to curators of intelligence.

And beneath all of this, the hardware layer itself is transforming. The recent collaboration between two of the world’s largest chipmakers — Intel and NVIDIA — underscores a clear trend: AI capability is becoming universal. Traditional silicon is being redesigned to include GPU and AI-acceleration features everywhere — not just in hyperscale training hubs, but across distributed compute environments, at the edge, and even inside local data centers.

All these layers — chips, data centers, networks, and platforms — are converging. BT’s Global Fabric connects them; hundreds of telcos provide regional assets and enterprise reach; Fortinet and others secure them; and Infobip, Five9 and others deliver the intelligent software layer that makes it all usable.

Together, they form the blueprint for how AI will be deployed globally — and locally — in the years ahead.

The Ecosystem Imperative

What Dublin made crystal clear is that no single company can do this alone.

The complexity of AI in communications — from silicon to inference to orchestration and trust — is too great for any one player. It takes an ecosystem.

And that’s exactly what we say coming together in Dublin:

  • BT, laying down the intelligent, sovereign network foundation.
  • Infobip, connecting that foundation to the developer and CPaaS ecosystem.
  • Five9, orchestrating human and AI collaboration in customer engagement.
  • Fortinet, ensuring that every connection and every inference remains secure.
  • Data-center and hardware partners, redefining infrastructure for local, sovereign AI.

It’s a layered, interdependent system — and that’s what makes it exciting. The boundaries between telco, cloud, and AI are dissolving. What’s emerging instead is a living ecosystem of intelligence, distributed across every layer of communication.

From Cloud to AI: The Redefinition of Communications

For a decade, the cloud defined how we built and scaled communications. The AI era will define how we adapt them.

Where cloud was about stability and scale, AI is about adaptability and intelligence.

It’s no longer enough to connect people and systems; we need to connect insights, automate trust, and design for continuous learning.

Standing in that room in Dublin — surrounded by leaders from BT, Infobip, Five9, Fortinet and many others — it was impossible not to feel that shift happening right now.

The future of communications isn’t just connected.

It’s intelligent, secure, and sovereign by design.

And personally, I feel privileged to be working alongside so many of these visionary leaders — people who aren’t just talking about the next era of technology, but actively building it. Together, they’re shaping what the AI-driven future of communications will look like.

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