Digital Sovereignty Forum 2025 highlights and insights
By TelecomTV Staff
Jan 12, 2026
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Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:05):
Welcome to Telecom TV's brand new Digital Sovereignty Forum.
Warren Bayek, Wind River (00:10):
Without secure and resilient infrastructure, sovereignty will never actually be realized it will be aspirational rather than a reality.
Lasha Tabidze, VEON (00:18):
Sovereignty is not about closing the door, but about creating the opportunity for the country to innovate and export the innovation. When you talk about sovereignty, because it will come with regulation or at least requirements for guardrails.
Beth Cohen, Luth Computer (00:32):
It is a global supply chain. It takes a lot of countries to build a cell phone.
Dominic Laurie, SUSE (00:37):
Sovereignty means different things to different people, depending on where they are in the ecosystem and where they are on their journey.
Sophie Greaves, techUK (00:43):
We're talking about resilience. So telecoms, it's critical national infrastructure. We need to ensure that it's always on, it's secure.
Mike Short, UKTIN (00:53):
I worry when we talk about sovereignty that we are going back to the world of nationalism. I worry that we're going back to reducing supplier choice. I worry that we are putting in objectives into an industry that isn't ready for sovereignty.
Aaron Boasman-Patel, TM Forum (01:07):
Having observability is absolutely critical for sovereignty, but I really think networks are becoming more complex rather than becoming simplified. There's
Manish Singh, Dell Technologies (01:16):
Questions around data security, data privacy, and of course the growing needs around data sovereignty as well.
Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis (01:24):
I think technology sovereignty, I don't like the word digital, is going to be extremely important and one of the buzzwords in 2026. Ideas around how sovereignty would be enhanced. Whether that lies more on the public sector, the government, or that whether the private companies and the market can help. Finding the right balance is something that we still need to discuss, but we took interesting first steps in that direction.
Welcome to Telecom TV's brand new Digital Sovereignty Forum.
Warren Bayek, Wind River (00:10):
Without secure and resilient infrastructure, sovereignty will never actually be realized it will be aspirational rather than a reality.
Lasha Tabidze, VEON (00:18):
Sovereignty is not about closing the door, but about creating the opportunity for the country to innovate and export the innovation. When you talk about sovereignty, because it will come with regulation or at least requirements for guardrails.
Beth Cohen, Luth Computer (00:32):
It is a global supply chain. It takes a lot of countries to build a cell phone.
Dominic Laurie, SUSE (00:37):
Sovereignty means different things to different people, depending on where they are in the ecosystem and where they are on their journey.
Sophie Greaves, techUK (00:43):
We're talking about resilience. So telecoms, it's critical national infrastructure. We need to ensure that it's always on, it's secure.
Mike Short, UKTIN (00:53):
I worry when we talk about sovereignty that we are going back to the world of nationalism. I worry that we're going back to reducing supplier choice. I worry that we are putting in objectives into an industry that isn't ready for sovereignty.
Aaron Boasman-Patel, TM Forum (01:07):
Having observability is absolutely critical for sovereignty, but I really think networks are becoming more complex rather than becoming simplified. There's
Manish Singh, Dell Technologies (01:16):
Questions around data security, data privacy, and of course the growing needs around data sovereignty as well.
Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis (01:24):
I think technology sovereignty, I don't like the word digital, is going to be extremely important and one of the buzzwords in 2026. Ideas around how sovereignty would be enhanced. Whether that lies more on the public sector, the government, or that whether the private companies and the market can help. Finding the right balance is something that we still need to discuss, but we took interesting first steps in that direction.
Please note that video transcripts are provided for reference only – content may vary from the published video or contain inaccuracies.
From policy to practice: Telecom’s sovereignty moment
The Digital Sovereignty Forum brought together the telecom ecosystem’s sharpest minds to explore how sovereignty is moving from theory into real-world strategy and engineering.
Across five in-depth sessions, senior leaders tackled the toughest questions about data control, resilient networks, open ecosystems and sovereign cloud strategies.
If you missed the live event, all sessions are available on demand.
Save the date: The Digital Sovereignty Forum returns to London on Wednesday, 2 December 2026.
Recorded December 2025
