Press Release

Young people in Llanelli have been putting their creativity and problem-solving abilities to the test as part of an interactive BT event helping pupils prepare for the changing world of work.

A total of 48 pupils from St. John Lloyd Catholic Comprehensive School took part in BT’s Work Ready programme, getting hands-on with how technology is shaping careers and exploring the skills they may need in the years ahead.

The activities included a real-world innovation challenge, which tasked pupils with designing a product to help young people study effectively. Working in teams, pupils developed ideas before presenting their solutions back to the wider class.

BT staff joined pupils throughout the day, supporting them through the challenge and bringing the world of work to life by sharing their own career experiences – offering insights into their day-to-day roles, the skills they use most often and the different routes they took into their careers.

The Llanelli workshop is the latest Work Ready session to be hosted in Wales. Created by BT to help prepare young people for their future careers, Work Ready is a programme for 11 to 14-year-olds that builds the practical, digital and human-centric skills needed for the changing world of work.

Since June 2025, 178 young people have taken part in face-to-face sessions across Wales. A further 157 pupils have participated in online sessions, taking the total number reached in Wales to more than 330 students.

Michael Kent, Assistant Headteacher at St. John Lloyd Catholic Comprehensive School, said: “It was great to see pupils getting involved in the activities working together and having the confidence to share their ideas with the class. Opportunities like this can make a real difference and having support from organisations like BT gives our pupils the chance to meet people from the world of work, hear about their experiences and get a better sense of the different paths open to them.”

Susi Marston, Head of Public Sector Wales at BT Business, added: “Technology has the power to create opportunity across Wales, but only if people have the skills and confidence to make the most of it. That’s why programmes like Work Ready are so important. By giving pupils practical experience and encouraging them to think creatively, we’re helping them explore future career opportunities and build skills that will support them throughout their lives. It’s fantastic to see young people in Llanelli engaging with these opportunities and developing the confidence to succeed in an increasingly digital world.”

The Work Ready programme is part of BT’s purpose to Connect for Good and its wider ambition to reach 30 million people and businesses with the digital skills, tools and support they need by 2030. It sits alongside the rollout of new gigabit-capable broadband delivered by Openreach as part of Project Gigabit, the government’s programme to bring fast, reliable broadband to hard-to-reach areas.

Across Wales, BT Group is investing in the digital infrastructure that underpins opportunity across Wales. More than eight in 10 Welsh homes can now access full fibre broadband through Openreach’s network, while EE’s 4G and 5G networks reach 99% and 93% of the Welsh population respectively, including through work in rural communities such as Penmachno and Clocaenog. Backed by more than £40 billion of planned UK infrastructure investment between 2020 and 2030, BT Group is helping people, businesses and communities build the skills and connectivity they need to thrive in a digital world.

Are the UK’s telcos doing enough to support digital skills development across the country? Join the discussion at Connected Britain 2027

Also in the news
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India’s Jio Platforms faces questions over its debt obligations, future tax payments and valuation ahead of a proposed INR302.13 billion (US$3.2 billion), according to GlobalData.

At close of India’s stock exchange today (October 23), Jio Platforms gained US$24.5 billion in investor bids, surpassing its initial public offering of US$3.2 billion 10 times over.

Jio has more than 524 million subscribers and controls nearly half of India’s wireless market. Its businesses span 5G, fixed wireless broadband, enterprise connectivity, cloud services and digital applications.

Revenue reportedly reached INR1.46 trillion (US$15.3 billion) in FY26, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) stood at around INR762.55 billion.

However, GlobalData company profiles analyst Murthy Grandhi said the company’s headline financial figures did not fully reflect its long-term obligations and potential cash-flow pressures.

Jio has around INR1.04 trillion in deferred spectrum payment obligations, which are excluded from its reported net debt and will not be repaid using IPO proceeds. The company reported net debt of approximately INR95.39 billion at the end of June.

Almost all IPO proceeds are intended to repay bank borrowings at Reliance Jio Infocomm (telco and digital services), potentially reducing interest costs. However, the relatively small amount of reported net debt compared with the proposed offering raises questions over the role of the wider spectrum liabilities and other commitments in the company’s financial structure.

Tax payments are another potential pressure point. Jio reported pretax profit of INR403.53 billion in FY26 but paid just INR1.18 billion in cash taxes, while recording more than INR100 billion in deferred tax expense.

Heavy investment in network infrastructure has generated tax benefits through accelerated depreciation. GlobalData said this tax shield could be largely exhausted around FY29, potentially pushing annual cash tax payments towards INR110 billion or more.

The resulting increase in tax outflows could put pressure on free cash flow as Jio continues to meet its spectrum obligations and fund growth. GlobalData said the company would need further tariff increases, customer upgrades and expansion in home broadband and enterprise services to sustain cash generation.

A monthly ARPU increase of INR10 across Jio’s subscriber base could generate more than INR60 billion in additional annual revenue, according to Grandhi. However, India’s price-sensitive market means higher tariffs could also affect subscriber growth.

Jio’s customer churn rate of 1.67% is lower than Bharti Airtel’s 2.43%, suggesting its wider digital services ecosystem is helping retain users.

Valuation could also prove contentious. While Jio appears cheaper than Airtel on a price-to-earnings basis, GlobalData said this comparison is affected by Jio’s unusually low current cash-tax payments. On enterprise value to EBITDA, a measure commonly used to compare capital-intensive telecoms operators, Jio appears to command a premium to Airtel despite lower ARPU and returns on capital employed.

Grandhi said Jio’s scale, customer retention and digital services business offered investors a compelling growth opportunity, but the IPO’s longer-term performance would depend on its ability to convert that scale into stronger, more diversified cash flow while managing its financial obligations.

Crusoe, a company that builds AI-optimised data centres harnessing large-scale energy sources, has announced a strategic partnership with Paraguayan energy and infrastructure developer Araico to build high-performance AI compute infrastructure powered by the Itaipú Hydroelectric Dam.

The dam is sited on the Paraná River on the border between Brazil and Paraguay.

Crusoe plans to bring an initial deployment online in mid-2027, with a path to scale to 106 MW of IT capacity and long-term options to expand to approximately 280 MW total.

Located adjacent to the Itaipú substation, the facility will tap directly into one of the largest and most reliable 100% renewable hydroelectric power sources in the world and will serve both US cloud customers and growing in-region demand across Latin America through Crusoe’s full AI stack called Crusoe Cloud.

The initiative marks Crusoe’s first dedicated AI cloud deployment in Latin America. This project advances the company’s approach of locating AI compute directly at abundant energy sources worldwide.

Cully Cavness, Co-founder, President, and Chief Strategy Officer of Crusoe, explains: “Paraguay’s unique history and geography have enabled one of the most abundant renewable power sources in the world through the Itaipú Hydroelectric Dam. Crusoe’s energy-first strategy is designed precisely to unlock and add value to this kind of power resource through advanced digital infrastructure.”

Araico will lead local development and site infrastructure adjacent to the Itaipú substation, while Crusoe will manage, operate, and deliver the physical compute for Crusoe Cloud.

Crusoe says that this deployment in Paraguay strengthens its growing global footprint of energy-aligned AI infrastructure, extending its reach across North America, Europe, and now Latin America while deepening digital infrastructure ties throughout the Western Hemisphere.

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Data centre operator STT GDC announced on Wednesday that India-based AI cloud company Neysa will use its STT Noida 2 facility to host a new deployment of GPU infrastructure and its Velocis AI cloud platform.

STT GDC said the deployment is the first phase of a multi-year working relationship between the two companies. The first phase – which is expected to go live from the first quarter of next year – supports up to 9,000 GPUs, and is designed for high-density AI training and inference.

The deployment will give enterprises and startups access to the infrastructure needed to develop, train and deploy AI applications closer to their users and data, as well as run production AI workloads in India with predictable latency and data residency, said Bimal Khandelwal, CEO of STT GDC India.

“India’s AI ambitions will depend not only on access to compute, but on the digital infrastructure required to support increasingly complex and compute-intensive workloads at scale,” he said in a statement. “By bringing together Neysa’s specialised AI capabilities and STT GDC’s infrastructure expertise, this deployment will help enterprises move from experimentation to real-world applications. It also represents the kind of ecosystem collaboration needed to accelerate AI adoption and strengthen India’s position in the global digital economy.”

“Our customers need more than access to GPUs. They need capacity they can plan around, reliable operations and room to scale as their workloads evolve,” added Neysa CEO Sharad Sanghi. “That is why we plan the compute, platform and data centre infrastructure together. Our planned deployment at STT GDC’s Noida data centre is one part of that approach, bringing GPU infrastructure and Velocis, our AI cloud platform, together to support AI workloads in production.”

SoleCrypt, a provider of sustainable digital infrastructure, has announced plans for the SoleCrypt AI Campus in Bizerte, Tunisia, a 40 MW campus, beginning with a 7 MW first phase designed around the Nvidia HGX Rubin NVL8 platform.

This campus, Solecrypt says, represents a significant step towards developing sovereign AI infrastructure in North Africa.

As North Africa’s first purpose-built AI factory, the campus will support advanced AI workloads, including model training and inference. Phase One is designed to deploy 1,728 Nvidia Rubin GPUs, supported by high-density liquid cooling and resilient power infrastructure

Located approximately 3.6 kilometres by routed fibre path from the Medusa subsea cable landing, the campus will benefit from strategic connectivity to European and international networks.

SoleCrypt says sustainability is central to its approach. The development is supported by a dedicated 60 MW solar and battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Tozeur, designed to contribute new renewable electricity to Tunisia’s national grid while supporting the growth of AI infrastructure.

The campus brings together expertise across technology, engineering and infrastructure delivery, including partner companies such as Hosted.AI, bringing GPU capacity to market by translating high-density AI infrastructure into accessible cloud services for enterprises, startups and research organisations.

Schneider Electric, a specialist in energy management, automation and digitalisation, is key technology advisor, providing AI data centre reference architectures co-developed with multinational technology company Nvidia, alongside electrification, secure power, liquid cooling and intelligent infrastructure management solutions.

Planning, engineering and project management company Meinhardt provides independent technical review and assurance, Sterling & Wilson Data Centre (SWDC) is an international data centre EPC specialist, and Maerifa Solutions is an Nvidia Partner Network (NPN) Solution Provider Partner specialising in AI infrastructure solutions, leading the AI factory infrastructure architecture and bringing expertise in GPU cluster design, high-density computing and infrastructure scalability.

Also involved is Supermicro, a longstanding Nvidia partner specialising in GPU-optimised systems and direct liquid cooling AI infrastructure.

Expected to be operational in early 2028, the project aims to establish sovereign AI computing infrastructure in the region, enabling access to advanced computing capacity for businesses, startups and research organisations across North Africa and the wider MENA region.

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AI could help emerging market operators improve field workforce productivity and build new enterprise services, but simply adding it to existing operations will not reduce costs, says Markus Persson, Global Telecommunications Industry Director at IFS.

Persson (pictured, below), a telecoms veteran whose career includes experience with Ericsson, said AI could help emerging-market operators improve field workforce productivity and develop new enterprise services. But simply adding AI to existing operations will not reduce costs. “AI by itself would not save them any money,” said Persson, IFS’s Global Telecommunications Industry Director.

The savings depend on what operators change as a result. That could mean retiring software licences, reducing reliance on subcontractors, or using existing staff to handle more work before expanding the organisation. Persson described downsizing the operator’s own workforce as a last resort.

“If you are to save money, you have to cut expenses somewhere,” he said. “If you just take AI and put it in and work like you always have, you just become a little bit more efficient. You will be able to do more, but it will cost you more.”

For operators in markets where margins are tight and extending coverage is expensive, the distinction matters. Persson said AI is currently more of a cost-cutting opportunity, although he expects it to become more of a revenue-generating one over time.

That shift could come through enterprise connectivity. Persson said operators could use IFS applications to monitor service level agreements for connectivity sold to factories and other businesses. He argued that operators have yet to realise the full promise of 5G for business-to-business services, in part because they may struggle to connect with prospective customers in other industries or speak their language.

IFS works with customers in manufacturing, mining, construction and engineering, among other sectors. Persson said that experience could help operators identify and serve enterprise customers. AI could also free up staff to pursue new business, he said, since developing an offer and winning initial customers may take a dedicated team months or even years. Once a service is established and repeatable, expansion should become easier.

Persson pointed to Singtel as an example of an operator that has grown its business-to-business sales and customer base across the region. He said few operators had achieved that kind of scale with 5G, while noting Singtel’s ownership of operators in other markets, including Optus in Australia and Bharti in India.

The opportunity may be particularly relevant in emerging markets, where mobile services play a larger role in daily life and the economy, Persson said. He noted that mobile money is more widely used in parts of Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia than in Europe and North America, and cited MTN’s mobile money business as an example. Operators can be among the most reliable companies in some markets, he added.

Persson argued that operators in these markets could be quicker than their counterparts in Europe and North America to turn AI into revenue because they are accustomed to working with fewer resources. He compared the adoption of mobile money in African markets with its later arrival in Sweden.

Productivity depends on the workday

Field operations offer another potential source of efficiency, but Persson cautioned that software cannot create savings simply by reducing the time needed for individual jobs.

He said IFS had seen field workforce efficiency improve by 70 to 75 per cent when workers followed the jobs assigned to them. He also referred to improvements of more than 80 per cent in the United States. These figures describe efficiency gains, however, not necessarily equivalent reductions in costs.

If a technician saves five minutes on each job but uses that time for a longer break, the operator has not completed more work or reduced its spending. Savings emerge when the time saved is enough to fit an additional job into the working day. Persson described the effect as a “hockey stick”: productivity may rise without a corresponding financial gain until the team can complete another job.

The result also depends on conditions outside the software, including whether workers travel by car or bicycle and the state of local roads, he said. Operational gains shown in a presentation still need to be tested against practical conditions.

On infrastructure, Persson said operators moving to newer network equipment may encounter AI whether or not they choose to deploy it themselves. Equipment from vendors including Nokia, Huawei and Ericsson already incorporates AI for tasks such as self-configuration and adjusting parameters to suit network conditions.

He distinguished that embedded network functionality from AI used to change how operations and maintenance teams work. It is in those working practices, he said, that operators have more choice and where decisions about staffing, processes and spending will determine whether AI produces savings.

Security requires controls and human oversight

Persson said IFS had restricted the capabilities of its AI products in favour of security. He described earlier versions of IFS’s Intelligence product as having too much dependence on OpenAI, making it harder for IFS to control where data came from, where it went and how it was stored or used.

The company built additional controls around its products and data, he said. Intelligence does not store information unless a user instructs it to update something in IFS Cloud. The product also follows the user’s login permissions, so it can access only the data that person could access through the application.

Persson said IFS had held back some functionality to avoid breaching security requirements. He also said the company was working with its AI partners to determine how their respective tools could go to market in a way that provides value to the customer and gives each partner a fair return.

For operators considering where to introduce AI, Persson said he would be more cautious about using it in continuous integration and continuous development pipelines. Traditional workflows follow a set sequence, while goal-oriented agents can take different paths to reach an outcome. Some paths could be more damaging than others, he said. IFS is routing its agents through the same security controls used by Intelligence.

Persson’s central safeguard is that AI should not take consequential action without human approval. “As soon as it changes something, it never changes without the one who initiated it approving,” he said.

He rejected the idea that responsibility can be passed to an AI agent. “AI doesn’t start by itself. It’s always initiated by someone,” he said. The person who starts an agent remains responsible for its actions, in the same way a supervisor is accountable for an employee’s work.

Technical safeguards are only part of the picture, Persson added. Operators also need governance and a culture that encourages responsible use. “You can implement all the security you want in software, but if you have the door open, it doesn’t matter,” he said.

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