{"slug": "telcos-eye-edge-ai-as-they-switch-off-the-last-copper", "title": "Telcos eye edge AI as they switch off the last copper", "summary": "Telecom operators are repurposing their legacy copper exchange buildings for edge AI inference as they retire copper networks, according to The Stack. BT Group and Verizon announced a 50-50 joint venture in late June to combine international operations, while operators seek to capitalize on growing demand for edge inference.", "body_md": "[BT](/tag/bt/)\n\nIn their defence, they did try just about everything.\n\nSeeing the clear disadvantages of selling dumb pipes while the real value moved to higher layers in the network, telecom companies spent decades trying to climb that ladder.\n\nThey __tried__[ content](https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-media-be-acquired-apollo-funds?ref=thestack.technology), and that went about as well as you'd expect. They tried to become enterprise technology companies, only to discover that everyone from IBM to Accenture was, on average, not too bad at various bits of that business.\n\nThey built and operated data centres, only to discover the sheer scale of the hyperscalers made it hard to compete, and that selling out to colocation and infrastructure specialists – with hyperscalar customers – made more sense. Meanwhile, they sought greater scale themselves; in late June, [ Verizon and BT announced a 50-50 JV](https://newsroom.bt.com/bt-group-and-verizon-to-form-joint-venture-creating-a-scaled-international-connectivity-platform-for-multinational-customers/?ref=thestack.technology) to combine their international operations.\n\nBut the old-school operators may have one more trick up their sleeves: a whole bunch of nondescript buildings full of networking equipment just begging for new purpose, right as demand for inference at the edge burgeons.\n\nAnd it looks like they're going to be grabbing the opportunity.\n\n## Get the full story: Subscribe for free\n\nJoin peers managing over $100 billion in annual IT spend and subscribe to unlock full access to The Stack’s analysis and events.\n\n[Subscribe now](https://www.thestack.technology/membership/)\n\nAlready a member? [Sign in](https://www.thestack.technology/signin/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/telcos-eye-edge-ai-as-they-switch-off-the-last-copper", "canonical_source": "https://www.thestack.technology/telcos-edge-ai-copper/", "published_at": "2026-08-04 16:00:55+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-04 16:25:20.718312+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["BT Group", "Verizon", "The Stack"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/telcos-eye-edge-ai-as-they-switch-off-the-last-copper", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/telcos-eye-edge-ai-as-they-switch-off-the-last-copper.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/telcos-eye-edge-ai-as-they-switch-off-the-last-copper.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/telcos-eye-edge-ai-as-they-switch-off-the-last-copper.jsonld"}}