Telcos On Notice In AI Era - Lumen's Call To Arms
RCR Wireless, Monday, April 13th, 2026
Lumen chief executive Kate Johnson has penned an open letter to enterprise CEOs (and the whole telecoms industry): that there is a golden opportunity to connect the AI revolution, but legacy networks are not up to scratch, and the industry must move fast.
In sum - what to know:
More than plumbing - Johnson argues the network is now the 'nervous system' of the enterprise AI stack, directly shaping performance, cost, and ROI - which opens the door for telcos to reposition themselves.
New network design - AI workloads are in constant flux between the cloud and edge, with 50% of internet traffic now M2M; static legacy point-to-point networks don't work; cloud-like programmability is required.
Wasted GPU capacity - Constrained bandwidth means inefficiencies in short-life AI compute systems, where ROI is stretched to start with; conversely, flexible connectivity is an ROI enabler - and a smart sales pitch.