What’s up with… Nick Jeffery, AT&T and Lumen, Nokia

• Nick Jeffery joins Charter as COO
• AT&T and Lumen help launch critical infrastructure body
• Nokia lands edge deal at Telefónica

In today’s industry news roundup: Frontier’s former CEO is becoming a cable guy; AT&T and Lumen are among a host of US companies that have founded the Alliance for Critical Infrastructure; Nokia has landed itself an exclusive routing role in Telefónica’s edge facilities; and much more!

The answer to the question “What will Nick Jeffery do next?” following his departure from US operator Frontier Communications is “join Charter Communications as chief operating officer”. Jeffery left Frontier earlier this year after Verizon completed the $20bn takeover of the company and now the former Vodafone UK chief is to lead Charter’s marketing and sales, field operations and customer operations across the cable operator’s Spectrum residential and business Seamless Connectivity and Entertainment services, starting on 1 September. Chris Winfrey, president and CEO of  Charter Communications, stated: “Nick’s leadership, growth mindset and operational expertise, combined with his proven ability to improve customer service across residential, mobile, and B2B markets, make him the ideal person to help accelerate Spectrum’s next phase of growth. He successfully reinvented the consumer and business services reputation of both Frontier and Vodafone by systematically strengthening the customer experience and implementing innovative go-to-market strategies that delivered significant revenue, profitability and customer growth. ” 

US corporations including AT&T and Lumen Technologies have teamed up to launch a new coalition to strengthen national critical infrastructure resilience. The Alliance for Critical Infrastructure says it aims to “facilitate collaboration and information exchange” between members to identify systemic risks and develop strategies to strengthen the resilience of critical infrastructure sectors, and co-ordinate crisis response. Alongside AT&T and Lumen, founding members include a long list of massive US companies, such as AIG, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Consolidated Edison, JPMorganChase, Mastercard and more.

Under an exclusive agreement, Telefónica is deploying Nokia systems  – specifically its 7220 Interconnect Router (IXR) datacentre switches and 7750 Service Router (SR) datacentre gateways – at the 17 sovereign edge datacentres it is building across Spain to offer a range of services, including AI inference, to enterprise, government and residential customers. “Under the multi-year agreement, Nokia was awarded exclusive responsibility for deploying networking solutions to support 17 edge nodes, 12 of which have already been deployed, including at Telefónica’s flagship Tecno-Alcalá site – one of the largest datacentres in the world,” noted the vendor in this announcement. Sergio Sánchez, CTIO at Telefónica España, stated: “This initiative fully aligns with our strategy to make edge cloud and artificial intelligence main cornerstones of Telefónica’s growth. Nokia has proven to be a trusted connectivity partner in this mission, and they are playing a critical role in building secure, reliable datacentre networks for our ambitious edge node project. Through this effort, we are not only enhancing our digital infrastructure but also reinforcing Spain’s technological sovereignty and enabling a more dynamic, user-centric digital ecosystem.”

As a reminder, Telefónica, which is converting former telecom exchanges into mini datacentres for data processing, storage and analytics, outlined its plans for these edge datacentres in late January, then a few weeks later announced it had activated five of the facilities to provision B2B services, before hooking up with four other major European telcos to federate their edge datacentre facilities as part of the European Edge Continuum effort that, in theory, will enable the “seamless deployment of applications across their combined European footprint.” The edge continuum participants will be talking more about this regional edge federation at the upcoming MWC26 event in Barcelona. (Reminder – check out TelecomTV’s free-to-download MWC26 Hot Trends: A Barcelona Preview report before the show opens its doors on 2 March…) 

Back to Nokia… It has teamed up with a range of partners, including Canadian tech accelerator Numana, to test a quantum-safe networking blueprint at Numana’s distributed, three-node Kirq testbed “that can be used to strengthen Canada’s long-term digital security and critical infrastructure, including networks used by banks, hospitals and governments.” Nokia noted in this announcement: “Through interoperability testing on the Kirq platform, the teams validated practical, repeatable network architectures showing that multiple next-generation encryption technologies can operate together within a unified system. This is a critical step toward deploying quantum-resilient infrastructure across the country.” 

And still in the land of the maple leaf… Bell Canada has teamed up with Hypertec, a cloud services provider and datacentre operator, to “pursue opportunities in delivering end-to-end sovereign AI infrastructure built, hosted and operated in Canada. This partnership combines Hypertec’s Canadian-built GPU infrastructure, including advanced Nvidia-based AI systems manufactured through its domestic supply chain, with Bell AI Fabric, a national platform for Canadian-hosted AI compute and datacentre services,” noted the operator in this announcement. The news comes just weeks after Bell Canada teamed up with SAP Canada to “jointly deliver a comprehensive Canadian‑operated cloud solution designed to meet high standards of data protection and strengthen Canada’s digital sovereignty.”

NTT Data has announced a multi-year team-up with Ericsson to combine its full-stack enterprise network offering with the Swedish vendor’s private 5G platforms. The partnership, which aims to accelerate enterprise adoption of private 5G, will see NTT Data act as a global systems integration and managed services provider for Ericsson’s private 5G, with NTT Data Edge AI agents running on Ericsson’s enterprise edge platforms. Together they will develop joint sales, marketing and delivery for enterprises in sectors such as manufacturing, mining, ports, airports, energy and more.

– The staff, TelecomTV