yeah yeah everyone's chatting about ai aren't they everyone's chatting about data centers it's the way it's going isn't it something we actually weren't speaking about enough five years ago was probably data sovereignty i don't think it was hardly spoken about or spoken about like if at all um so ben i'm going to come to you for this one what does data sovereignty actually mean um why does it matter so much now and why are businesses perhaps worried about this as well

So first of all, I need to make sure I say sovereignty, right? Because 60% of the time it's sovereignty and 40% of the time it's sovereignty.

So data sovereignty is fundamentally, it's making sure that the data that is basically being stored in a particular geography, like let's say the U.K., The talent and the people that can access that data are also in the UK and the data is not going outside.

So taking us an example, it's making sure that data is kept securely in country and we kind of are confident and make sure that we have control of that all the time.

yeah and it's kind of it's it started becoming more prevalent recently you've seen there's like geopolitical stuff going on right which and you've seen all the things about subsea cables and all that kind of stuff so it's kind of it makes sense why it's more of a big thing now um but it does represent a big opportunity for us right because we're if you take us an example we've got a fantastic like domestic network um there's lots and lots of investment in this ai growth zones and everything going on in the uk so It's a good opportunity.

And kind of the way I see it, we've had like probably a decade or so of probably data centralization, right? The hyperscalers, which have done a fantastic job of making these enormous data centers, enormous cloud networks, and storing kind of all that data in one space.

that will still continue to happen.

And if anyone watching the podcast, any of our partners perhaps, are looking at an AI or a cloud networking opportunity in one of these growth areas, what should they be asking when it comes to connectivity and the network they need?