At AI conference, old-school telcos pitch cutting-edge digital 'sovereignty'

MONTREAL — Canada’s traditional telecom companies are jockeying for a piece of the federal government’s push for “digital sovereignty” in AI.

Among the thousands of business executives and tech specialists attending the All In Conference in Montreal on Tuesday was Mirko Bibic, CEO of Bell Canada.

Seated behind a Bell desk bracketed by booths representing tech firms, governments and research institutions, Bibic told The Canadian Press he was in Montreal to spread the word that his company is fully in the AI space.

With a shifting “geopolitical environment,” sovereignty is becoming “super critical,” Bibic said.

That includes digital sovereignty — a principle Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon defined in his opening keynote at the conference as a digital economy “that someone e