Bell Canada (NYSE: BCE) and Cisco announced a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on a sovereign AI infrastructure offering for Canada, combining Bell's data centre, network and operations capabilities with Cisco's AI, security, observability, infrastructure monitoring and management, and Sovereign Critical Infrastructure technologies.

The collaboration will focus on three areas: building a Canadian platform for sovereign AI, supporting modular AI infrastructure deployments, and developing flexible commercial models. Under the agreement, Bell and Cisco will assess how Cisco AI PODs architectures can be combined with Canadian infrastructure, connectivity and operations services, and will explore consumption models intended to let customers align costs with their use of AI infrastructure.

The companies said the offering is aimed at government agencies, regulated industries and other sectors where data residency, security and operational control are priorities.

"Bell is focused on helping turn sovereign AI from ambition into infrastructure Canadian organizations can use," said John Watson, Group President, Business Markets, Bell Cyber, AI Fabric and Ateko. "Through this collaboration with Cisco, we will work to make it easier to deploy and scale sovereign AI infrastructure for customers that need greater control, resilience and confidence in the systems behind their most critical workloads."

Raj Juneja, President of Cisco Canada, said the collaboration would bring Cisco's Sovereign Critical Infrastructure portfolio together with Bell's Canadian data centre capacity, connectivity and operations to support infrastructure that is "configurable, secure and easier for organizations to deploy with confidence."

The announcement builds on Bell's existing Bell AI Fabric initiative. Financial terms of the MOU were not disclosed.