Digital sovereignty has traditionally started with where data is stored, where infrastructure is located, and which jurisdiction applies. While location remains important, it no longer describes the full challenge of modern infrastructure. Cloud platforms, communications networks, applications, and AI now operate as one interconnected environment. Data can be stored in one country, processed in another, and acted on somewhere else. Location tells an organization where its information sits but does not necessarily reveal who can access the system, change it, disconnect it, or make decisions through it.
That distinction becomes more significant as AI moves beyond analysis and begins taking action. An organization may comply with residency requirements while still lacking visibility into an agent's permissions, the systems it can reach, or the decisions it can execute. Operational sovereignty brings the focus back to control. Technical, contractual, and operational measures must work together across the infrastructure stack so organizations can observe what is happening, enforce policy, intervene when necessary, and continue operating when a critical dependency fails.
In collaboration with Microsoft, FNTV's first episode of “The Sovereignty Era” examines the shift from territorial sovereignty to operational control. Communications networks now connect cloud, AI, industry, and critical infrastructure across borders, placing telecom operators at the center of a much larger system of dependencies. The practical test isn’t where data resides. It’s how an organization can understand those dependencies, govern the systems acting on its behalf, and retain the ability to operate when conditions change.
To learn more about digital sovereignty, visit https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sovereignty.
Steve Saunders:
In 2017, the NotPetya attack took Maersk offline. Ships, containers, ports, still there, but the digital systems connecting them stopped working. And one of the world's largest shipping companies lost the ability to operate its business. In 2021, hackers broke into Colonial Pipeline's IT network. They didn't have to blow up a pipeline. The possibility that they might gain control of the systems operating it was enough to shut down five and a half thousand miles of infrastructure. Supplying half of the fuel consumed on the East Coast of America.
Different events, but sharing a common problem, loss of network control. And as global economies become increasingly reliant on communications and increasingly interconnected, the dangers are multiplying. And that raises an important question. In the 21st century digital economy, who controls the systems that control everything else? That's the big question facing both the communications industry and the world today.
In the old days, networks had one job to let people talk to each other on the phone. Today, communications networks are the connective tissue linking everything from business and industry to energy, transportation, healthcare, cloud, AI, and the critical infrastructure on which modern society depends. That's changed what matters most in communications. It's no longer core quality, price, or capacity. Increasingly, it's about control.
And because this is the communications industry, we have a fancy term for that, operational sovereignty or OpsSov. Now, operational sovereignty is based on a pretty simple idea, who ultimately has control over the systems we increasingly depend upon? Simple concept, very complicated in practice. The idea of sovereignty comes from an older world. It dates all the way back to the piece of Westphalia in 1648. Where men in lace collars and amusing hats defined the principle that states controlled whatever happened within their own borders. And for a long time, we applied the same idea to communications. Sovereign data was national data. National data was sovereign data.
But today, data doesn't respect borders. Data wants to travel. It can be stored in one country, processed in another, and it can travel and be transported through several more. The challenge is maintaining control when data, applications, and infrastructure cross borders. It's a fundamental shift. The old model of sovereignty was territorial. The new model is operational. It's all about control without borders.
How should telecom operators approach the challenge of operational sovereignty? Well, step one is understanding that there is no one size fits all solution. Operational sovereignty requires a combination of technology, regulation, international law, and security. What's needed is an ecosystem of specialists that can combine their strengths with those of their partners to meet the demands of one of the most complex biomes in technology.
It's essential to define the operational sovereignty playing field. Now here, Microsoft offers a helpful framework. It defines operational sovereignty through three categories, technical, contractual, and operational controls. Technical controls govern things like data residency, encryption, access, and security. Contractual controls establish the legal rights, the protections and obligations governing the infrastructure, and the organizations that are providing it. And operational controls address who can change a system, who can access it, disconnect it, and increasingly make decisions on its behalf. Operational sovereignty exists only when all three work together.
Even with the best planning in the world, things can go wrong. And designing a sovereign multinational network supporting critical infrastructure, industry, or an entire economy may be the most complex job carriers have ever faced. Think of it like repairing a modern airliner while it's already in flight. Thousands of interdependent systems have to work together. Failure in one can cascade into others. But you don't get to land the plane while you figure it out. With that much at stake, one of the most useful ways I've heard sovereignty described recently is simply as risk management.
Kate Johnson:
I think the real wake-up call has been for the telecom industry is how we use AI to transform ourselves. And how we see our own data flow as informing what other enterprises might be going through as well. And I think that has been a real awakening for many. It's when you take our legacy and history of connecting people, data, and applications, but then you disperse people, data, and applications globally in this remarkable way.
And then you add billions and billions of agents to the mix. And those agents are sitting in data centers. They need to talk to the clouds, they need to talk to the Edge, they need to talk to the people back in the building. And you can't do that without an orchestration layer. And that is really sort of the breakthrough and what created a really interesting path for growth for this company is providing that orchestration. So that enterprises have a networking solution that allows them to achieve their AI ambitions.
Steve Saunders:
And this all matters because in the 21st Century, the hottest new telecom service isn't a service at all, it's control.