Deglobalization is changing the network, and Nokia’s European DNA gives it the advantage in a brave new world.

That’s the view of Paul Alexander, VP & country general manager for Nokia UK&I, on the day Nokia announced probably one of its most important deals of the year, securing the networking deal for Nscale, the data center at the heart of OpenAI’s Stargate buildout in Europe.

That deal will see Nokia serve as Nscale’s preferred partner for networking technologies to build out its AI clusters, collaborating also on networking stack innovations for said clusters, while providing switches, IP routing, and optical networking capabilities for the project.

For Alexander, the opportunity sees Nokia become a key builder in tomorrow’s AI networks, with the vendor becoming a “fundamental part of this ecosystem as it grows and develops.”

The exec emphasized the growth part, seeing AI as still in its formative phase for businesses, citing Nokia Bell Labs research that less than half of enterprises are actually using AI today.

“We're still in the phase of building out the infrastructure and the large language models … When that [takes off], we think traffic volumes will absolutely grow. Bell Labs has given some indications that they see traffic growing as much as 20% CAGR per year from now on, and around 25% of all WAN traffic will be AI traffic by, say, 2030.

“We're talking about high-capacity, low-latency, highly secure, highly performant networks. That's what Nokia does. That's in our DNA. So applying that to the AI in the data center world makes perfect sense."

Nokia, the European leader?

Also in Nokia’s DNA is its “uniquely European” nature, according to Alexander, putting it in good stead during the current age of automation amid deglobalization.

With AI on the rise due to U.S. hyperscaler influence, discussions on data sovereignty have heated up as the European Union (EU) seeks to ringfence data within its borders.

The European data residency question has seen Cisco, SAP, SUSE, Microsoft and more invest in EU-compliant solutions within recent months, as the EU Data Act kicked into gear in September to weaken vendor lock-in for Europe's cloud customers.

In a recent DCD Compute panel attended by SDxCentral, execs questioned the level of commitment and detail in ensuring European data sovereignty, noting that while the continent may be progressing on data centers and silicon, it may always have to rely on third-party nations to build out the full-stack supply chain, something Alexander echoed.

“At the platform level, it’s not European, it's not British, it's actually American. Is it operationally sovereign? Well, is it being operated under a legal entity by people based here in the U.K., in your U.K. data center, your U.K. operations center? Or is it somewhere else?”

“For me, I think we need to understand what sovereign means below the data into the operational, into the platform level. And I think that conversation is being had at the moment.”

Alexander said this plays into Nokia’s advantage as a European player, while breaking down its advantage over Europe’s other major player, Ericsson, and global rival Huawei, whom Nokia CEO Justin Hotard recently called out as a “high-risk vendor” to be axed from Europe.

One USP, Alexander argued, is Nokia’s security credentials, noting AI steadily increases the security threat, while more banking customers are demanding quantum-safe networks, seeing Nokia recently release a 50G PON solution designed to ensure quantum-safe measures in passive optical networks.

“We're seeing growing demand for our Deepfield Defender product, which is a DDoS mitigation analyst and analysis, and mitigation tool. DDoS is still a fundamental issue. The number of DDoS attacks out there is still big and growing, and it's being weaponized by AI.

“We build security into our products as part of [our] DNA. It's not an afterthought. We have this defense in-depth capability,” said Alexander, before giving a broader overview on Nokia’s strengths over its competitors.

“When we talk about networks, transport networks, optical, IP, fixed access, really it’s Nokia [and not Ericsson] from a sovereign Europe point of view. So I think that's one of the things that separates us.

“I also think we have that global reach, the breadth of portfolio that is only rivaled by one other major vendor in the world, who cannot really operate effectively in the U.K. and increasingly in Europe. That breadth … sets us apart from some of the other vendors that you might consider in this space, especially as we move into this world of AI with geopolitics and cybersecurity being fundamental in everyone's minds.”