Data sovereignty has been riding high on the communications agenda this year, with intensifying geopolitical tensions and conflicts across the globe bringing the issue to the fore.

It was a hot topic at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this March, while recent reports indicate that 80% of business leaders in some major European markets have become more concerned about data sovereignty in the past couple of years.

These concerns are far from being without foundation. The EU, for example, is estimated to rely on non-EU countries for over 80% of digital services, and further data suggests 85% of Europe’s cloud sector is controlled by US providers, including hyperscalers.

This comes amid the meteoric rise of AI as the most transformative force in the economy. With AI woven so deeply into our digital lives and into the operations of businesses, governments and all dimensions of society, controlling the data that feeds it becomes crucial.

While efforts are being made to ramp up data sovereignty, much of the focus so far has been on the compute and storage side of the equation – that is, where the data is stored and processed – rather than on where the data flows on the network.

“Data sovereignty has become top of mind on government and industry agendas, particularly with the current geopolitical instability,” says Will Rhodes, head of partners for the EMEA region at networking systems, services and software provider Ciena. “With AI growing in importance, its enabling compute infrastructure and the networks that connect it need to be treated as national strategic assets.”

Raising awareness
When the network component of the solution lags, investments made in compute-related sovereign infrastructure risk not delivering the desired outcomes.

If critical data is not kept within borders, the resiliency and autonomy of sovereign deployments are compromised. Sovereign GPU clusters may get the bulk of press coverage at present and represent the bulk of investments, but all of it depends on the networks to move data around.

The good news is that Rhodes feels more recognition is coming into view. “There’s this ‘aha’ moment that we and some of our partners feel is imminent, if not already starting, that there’s a need to do on the network side what’s being done for compute-side sovereignty in a meaningful, structured, reliable and secure way,” he says. “I’d like to think that we’re now, in 2026, at an inflection point where the network takes a leading role in data sovereignty initiatives.”

In the UK, which Rhodes believes is among the countries now taking a lead in Europe on data sovereignty alongside Germany and France, Ciena is a strategic partner of major connectivity provider Virgin Media Business Wholesale.

The two are working together on the operator’s ongoing multimillion pound network initiative Project Spark launched in 2020, with Ciena helping upgrade its partner’s infrastructure using its optical, routing and switching technology.

As a UK-only provider, Virgin Media Business Wholesale is positioning itself as an ideal partner in the country for organisations needing confidence that data remains under national jurisdiction at all times, championing the concept of ‘data sovereignty by design’.

Inner strength
The company, which serves telecoms carriers, data centre operators, hyperscalers, critical national infrastructure providers, altnets and resellers, has the UK’s largest available dark fibre network, with more than 190,000km of fibre across the country. It also owns over 330 points of presence and 160 connected data centres.

That scale of infrastructure, which gives Virgin Media Business Wholesale the UK’s second-largest fibre network and the ability to offer strong resiliency and diverse end-to-end network options, can act as a major attraction for players looking to protect data inside the country.

Ben Archer, head of business development and network infrastructure sales at the company, explains that the UK and EU have robust frameworks for data protection in terms of measures such as GDPR and the UK’s Data Protection Act.

However, he says, implementation of strategies and technologies to protect international cross-border networks is still lagging.

While that remains the case, a large-scale domestic provider with an extensive nationwide network can in the meantime offer clear benefits for those that want to get ahead and provide their customers with a competitive edge on the security front.

“At Virgin Media Business Wholesale, we have a fully domesticated network that’s not transferring data outside the country,” says Archer. “If a hyperscaler or any other enterprise works with us, they can therefore be assured that the network is secure.”

Providing for all
To act as a true data sovereignty partner for the UK, the company has been working with Ciena as part of Project Spark to enable a full product stack that meets the whole range of service requirements for players of all sizes. This has the result of extending its traditional focus at the low-to-mid-scale end of the market among enterprises and public sector companies to a much wider range of customers.

“We don’t want to just support one end of the market, but to meet the requirements of all types of partner, from small businesses to neocloud providers and hyperscalers,” says Archer. “That’s part of the reason we feel we need to offer a full suite of services all the way from broadband up to 400G services and dark fibre.”

The upgrades that Virgin Media Business Wholesale has made under Project Spark are clearly paying off from both a performance and data sovereignty perspective for partners such as nLighten,a provider of sustainable carrier-neutral edge data centres across Western Europe.

While having a partner like Virgin Media Business Wholesale gives nLighten a stamp of trust and credibility, including among public sector players with particularly stringent data sovereignty requirements, the company has seen an acceleration in capacity delivery times of around 30% compared with what it experienced before the partnership. In addition, nLighten can offer 100G services at price points comparable to 10G just a couple of years ago.

Localised AI
And not only is Virgin Media Business Wholesale providing services to support all sizes of customer, but the company has also prepared itself to enable the secure development of AI services at a local, in-country level. Again, this is with the help of Ciena, which has already built an AI-inference-ready network for all key UK metros where the operator’s network has coverage.

Moreover, the roadmap that the operator has planned to prepare its network for higher capacities, including later terabit-level services, will enable partners to support the growing volumes of AI workloads.

Efforts to provide tightly controlled data sovereignty are becoming an increasing focus for a number of corporate and public sector clients, particularly as the general public becomes more aware of the role of data centres and data protection in AI and modern communications.

Incidents such as subsea cable cuts have also risen to the fore in the past few years, making people more aware of the risks involved in the overall communications market.

Tightening rules
“Regulatory frameworks around data sovereignty are going to become more of a focus and get tighter in the future,” says Archer. “Governments around the world are thinking about this and it’s only going to become a hotter topic.”

He believes that moves to centralise communications with massive data centre builds over the past decade will become mixed with an increasingly localised focus in the coming years, geared towards data protection for specific customer segments.

New companies may arise to specialise in data sovereignty in particular markets. But in the meantime, players like Virgin Media Business Wholesale, which can provide nationally controlled connectivity that ensures data will be kept within country borders, are ready to give a headstart to partners on the quest for network sovereignty.