What’s up with… Telus, Nvidia, BT

• Telus preps sovereign AI factory
• Nvidia is hogging the headlines
• BT expands its 5G SA reach

In today’s industry news roundup: Telus is building AI datacentres to meet Canada’s sovereign AI needs; Nvidia unleashes a welter of updates and announcements that impacts pretty much the whole tech sector and every industry sector, including telecom; BT’s EE consumer division expands its 5G standalone reach to more than 40% of the UK’s population; and much more!

Telus is to build a Sovereign AI Factory for Canada in collaboration with AI tech giant Nvidia that will provide the country’s businesses and researchers with access to the “supercomputers and software needed to train AI while keeping data safe within Canada’s borders,” the Canadian telco has announced. Telus will deploy Nvidia’s latest-generation graphics processing units (GPUs), and use the vendor’s Cloud Partner (NCP) Reference Architectures and software stack, at its datacentre in Quebec by summer 2025, with plans for expansion at its facility in British Columbia. The datacentres will host Nvidia’s latest Hopper- and Blackwell-based supercomputers, “enabling faster AI model training, fine-tuning and advanced inference capabilities. Telus will be among the first to introduce these accelerated computing platforms to Canada, playing a crucial role in the country’s AI ecosystem,” it stated. The AI Factory facilities will be connected to the telco’s “high-speed, ultra-low-latency, fibre-optic network… to deliver AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS),” noted the operator, which boasts that its datacentres are “designed to be three times more energy efficient for excess power usage than the industry average, using significantly less electricity to power AI computing workloads. The facilities also rely on natural cooling, cutting water consumption by more than 75% compared to traditional datacentres. With these efficiency measures in place, Telus’s Sovereign AI Factory will be one of the most sustainable AI-ready datacentres in the world,” stated the telco. Telus CIO Hesham Fahmy stated: “Canada has made AI a national priority, investing in talent, research and commercialisation. The Telus Sovereign AI Factory now provides the infrastructure for this innovation to scale, empowering Canadian businesses, startups and researchers with access to cutting-edge AI infrastructure to turn their bold ideas into real-world breakthroughs – and now, they don’t have to look beyond our borders to get it,” he stated (potentially mischievously). “Telus has been at the forefront of AI adoption for years, embedding it across our networks and operations to enhance services and drive efficiency. With the Sovereign AI Factory, we’re now giving our customers the accelerated computing power needed to grow, compete globally and shape the future of AI – right here in Canada. Collaborating with Nvidia gives us the advanced computing capabilities needed to drive Canadian AI innovation while strengthening Canadian digital independence.” Ronnie Vasishta, Nvidia’s head of telecom, added: “Sovereign AI infrastructure is critical for every nation to advance their society and economy, while preserving their own data, enabling them to drive a local intelligence revolution with global technology advancements. Telus is now the first North American service provider to become an official Nvidia Cloud Partner, combining their advanced network and secure cloud infrastructure with the latest Nvidia AI platforms, and empowering Canadian businesses to innovate at the pace of AI.”

As the tech company that everyone wants (and some absolutely need) to work with, Nvidia’s GTC event (underway in San Jose, California) is attracting a lot of attention and Nvidia is making the most of it, releasing almost 20 press releases and almost as many blogs about new products, tech developments, partnerships and more to coincide with the GTC opening keynote by CEO Jensen Huang, the highlights of which you can read about here. There’s a lot to take in from the various announcements, but for the telecom sector specifically we’ll call out the new collaborative effort to develop AI-native wireless networks stack for 6G (which we have written about in detail here), and the development of telco-specific large language models (LLMs), or large telco models (LTMs) as Nvidia calls them, by SoftBank and Tech Mahindra (which we have also reported on here). Nvidia is also building a Boston-based quantum computing research centre. According to the company, the “Nvidia Accelerated Quantum Research Center, or NVAQC, will integrate leading quantum hardware with AI supercomputers, enabling what is known as accelerated quantum supercomputing.” In addition, Nvidia has developed, in partnership with multiple vendors including optical tech specialists Coherent, Corning and Lumentum, silicon photonics network switches that are designed to “enable AI factories to connect millions of GPUs across sites while drastically reducing energy consumption and operational costs.” Nvidia says it has “achieved the fusion of electronic circuits and optical communications at massive scale.” That will be a concern to the equipment vendors hoping to make a few bucks from developing and selling their own optical networking technology to AI datacentre operators. For the bigger picture on what Nvidia has unveiled, what it is planning and what it all means in the grand scheme of things, I recommend reading the highlights analysis by long-time industry analyst Richard Windsor in this Radio Free Mobile blog. Among many interesting observations and helpful calculations, he points out that MediaTek is playing a key role in taking Nvidia’s GPU technology out of the datacentre and into edge and enterprise locations.   

EE, the main consumer operation of UK national telco BT Group, is expanding the reach of its 5G standalone (5G SA) network which, by the end of this month, is set to reach more than 28 million Brits (more than 40% of the country’s population) across 50 major towns and cities. BT first switched on its 5G SA capabilities (in 15 locations) in September 2024. The operator notes that it “only announces 5G standalone availability once a location has at least 95% outdoor coverage so customers upgrading to the new technology know they will receive a reliable and consistent experience.” In addition, the availability of smartphones and connected devices capable of “harnessing” 5G SA has “grown considerably since EE first launched its service, with brands including Apple, Samsung, Google, Motorola, Nokia, TCL and Honor now offering compatible smartphones – many of which also have built-in AI applications,” noted EE. “One of the benefits of 5G standalone is that it can provide a smoother experience for customers using the newest AI tools on their devices, such as Galaxy AI and Gemini AI, both now and in the future.” Malcolm Cubitt, director of mobile at EE, stated: “5G standalone is giving many customers a better and more reliable mobile experience, especially in busy locations. As we rapidly expand our network footprint to cover more than 40% of the UK population, we are widening its accessibility so more people can benefit – especially those looking to harness the power of cutting-edge features on the newest smartphones.” Having 5G SA capabilities is important to service providers because it enables an additional swathe of new revenue-generating applications and improves the 5G customer experience – as we like to say here at TelecomTV Towers, it’s “full-fat 5G”, as opposed to the semi-skimmed 5G that is non-standalone 5G.   

Ajit Pai, who was chairman of US regulator the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) during Donald Trump’s first stint as US president, has been appointed as the president and CEO of CTIA, the US wireless industry association, starting 1 April. Pai will join CTIA from Searchlight Capital Partners, a leading global private investment firm. He will replace Meredith Attwell Baker, who announced her retirement last December and has served in the role since 2014. “I am honored to lead CTIA. The wireless industry is a key driver of technology innovation and investment in the US. And it helps advance America’s global competitiveness, national security, and economic security,” said Pai. “Together, we will work to ensure that our nation’s spectrum and infrastructure policies promote US global wireless leadership and keep consumers on the leading edge of innovation.” With Pai so well connected to Trump, the appointment gives the CTIA a hotline into the White House (and the FCC) at a time when deregulation is in the air and the CTIA’s members will want to ensure they benefit from such actions as much as possible.

– The staff, TelecomTV