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MWC Primer: What is “sovereign AI” and how does it relate to the telecoms industry?

Sovereign-AI

As happens around this time every year, the telecom industry’s attention turns to Mobile World Congress.

Perhaps predictably, this year’s agenda (and likely many of the conversations that will follow in Barcelona) is dominated by AI, a topic we’ve looked at more than once in recent blogs. But there’s a particular aspect of AI that seems to be taking centre stage: Sovereign AI. That’s what we’ll discuss in this blog.
To begin with, let’s answer the obvious question: exactly what is “sovereign AI”? Well, the term refers to how AI systems are developed, operated, and governed in a way that allows them to retain control, data, infrastructure, and legal responsibility within a defined authority.
That authority could take any one of several guises – it might be a nation or state, a region, an enterprise, or something else. The point is, the “sovereign” entity shouldn’t be dependent on any external or foreign provider but, rather, self-contained. To achieve this, sovereign AI emphasises conditions like data and model residency, operational autonomy, legal and regulatory compliance, and technology independence. In a little more detail:
  • Data control and residency generally require AI training and inference happen on infrastructure that is within the specific jurisdiction or organisation. 
  • Operational and model autonomy means the AIs owner alone decides who manages and updates the AI models as well as who can modify them. 
  • Governance under local laws requires that the AI system complies with domestic regulations on privacy, security, and ethics (e.g., GDPR in Europe). 
  • Strategic independence means the AI is as independent as possible to avoid reliance on external technology providers or geopolitical adversaries for mission-critical AI capabilities. 
The obvious example of sovereign AIs application is governments, where it is increasingly part of a broader digital sovereignty agendas that take into account national security, economic resilience, and cultural alignment.  For enterprises, sovereign AI is a means owning and governing AI systems to manage risk, privacy, and continuity.

Why sovereign AI Matters to the Telecoms Industry

The telecoms sector is particularly relevant to sovereign AI for several reasons:
For a start, telcos already own and manage extensive physical networks (fiber, data centres, etc.) and are deeply embedded in national critical infrastructure. That makes them obvious hosts for sovereign AI systems because they’re in position to ensure local data handling, compliance with telecom regulations, and integration into existing networks.
Telcos also already have distributed data centres and edge computing capabilities that can run AI inference close to data sources so they’re in position to meet data residency and latency requirements for sovereign AI use cases, especially in sensitive sectors like government or national security.
Additionally, telcos are increasingly seen as potential hosts of “AI factories”—regional computing hubs that build, fine-tune, and deploy sovereign AI models. Telco facilities can support local economic development, reduce reliance on global hyperscalers, and open new services (e.g., edge AI applications). Plus, embedding sovereign AI, telcos can offer differentiated services like secure, compliant AI platforms for enterprises and governments, AI-powered edge analytics, and autonomous network management tools.
In short, telcos are well positioned to play a central role as strategic infrastructure partners in national AI ecosystems. They can differentiate from global cloud and AI hyperscalers by offering localized, secure AI services and via Sovereign AI they can support more resilient, autonomous networks—especially as next-gen architectures (like AI-native 6G) emerge.
Sovereign AI is about control and trust in the development and use of artificial intelligence, and the telecoms industry should become both a key enabler and a beneficiary of this trend, given its infrastructure, regulatory experience, and strategic position in national digital ecosystems. Mobile World Congress will doubtless tell us more.

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