Capacity Europe 2026 Agenda

As AI agents rapidly reshape internet traffic, networks are entering a new era where machines generate more activity than humans. Keri Gilder explores what this shift means for digital infrastructure, from AI-optimised and autonomous networks to the security, governance, and capacity challenges providers must address to support the next wave of AI-driven growth.

This keynote examines where AI ambition is delivering results in connectivity & network infra, by unpacking revenue opportunities, board priorities, and the constraints around talent, productisation, partnerships, CapEx and regulation, driving sustainable growth outcomes.

AI is reshaping fibre demand across training hubs, inference and edge networks. This panel examines fast‑track corridor builds, dark fibre strategies, investment choices, network design and early engagement with customers.

Neoclouds began as GPU stopgaps, but sustainable economics require moving up the AI stack. This case study This case study explores how telco partnerships unlock scale, talent and route‑to‑market against hyperscaler competition.

Format: Attendees self-select one of 3 tables. A dedicated moderator (senior operator, panellist or independent chair) runs each table for 20-30 minutes.

• Who Pays for AI Networks? Hubs, Inference and the Edge
• Building AI Corridors: Where Are the Real Capacity Bottlenecks?
• Carrier Relevance in the AI Stack: Where Is the Defensible Value?

Networks are increasingly intelligent, but most organisations struggle to turn visibility into control. This session explores how digital twins and operational data can drive real automation, accelerate scaling decisions, cut costs and improve customer experience.

Legacy networks are blocking automation as customer expectations accelerate. This panel examines fixes, AI agents, integration trade-offs, and who wins or loses as operators chase NaaS, edge and AI revenue.

• Why Has NaaS Not Taken Off: Legacy Tech, Culture, or Risk?
• Does NaaS Sell Alone, or Only When Bundled with Edge, Cloud and Security?
• Who Actually Makes Automation Work: Integrators or OSS/BSS Vendors?

AI monetisation is shifting from infrastructure to outcomes. This panel explores where AI sits in the service stack, how it is productised through APIs and managed services, and which models customers will pay for.

• Who owns the AI Relationship: Telcos, Platforms, or Partners?
• Where Does AI Actually Sit in the Telco Stack?
• Selling Intelligence, Not Infrastructure: What Will Customers Pay For?

AI is reshaping how infrastructure creates value. As inference becomes more distributed, customers need resilience, trust, sovereignty and assurance end to end. Service providers and neoclouds occupy potential complementary positions in this evolving value chain, spanning reach, interconnection, trusted delivery and inference platforms. This session briefly examines where this shift creates opportunities for differentiated services and new revenue models.

For the first time, Europe’s colocation providers, carriers and internet exchanges share a stage, debating joint ventures, shared models, network convergence, AI delivery, and revenue opportunities across digital infrastructure stack.

Attendees self-select one of 3 tables. A dedicated moderator (senior operator, panellist or independent chair) runs each table for 20-30 minutes.

• All Under One Roof: Does Europe Need Fully Integrated ‘Fibre & Data Center’ Hubs?
• Is Convergence the Cure for Capacity Constraints?
• Who Owns the Future: Telcos, Cloud Giants, or Neutral Hosts?

Europe’s AI ambitions face a fundamental question: can the grid cope? This talk explores securing power, grid access, renewables, and solutions from utilities and energy partners to meet rising demand.

Power constraints now gate data centre growth. Hear how energy providers, hyperscalers and operators secure grid access, deploy on-site power, scale renewables, and keep Europe’s digital expansion on track.

• The New Power Play: Should Data Centres Become Energy Producers
• Crunching the Kilowatts: How to Secure Grid Access Faster?
• Beyond Greenwashing: Real Steps to Embed Sustainability in AI Infrastructure

From Dublin to Frankfurt, projects face red tape and community pushback. This session explores permitting reform, policy alignment, and how to reduce delays while building trust to enable critical infrastructure.

Europe’s fragmented planning rules and rising opposition are slowing data centres, fibre and energy projects. Who takes the lead to fix approvals, align communities and unblock infrastructure deployment across Europe?

• Community Benefit or Box-Ticking: What really wins local support?
• United Front: Can industry convergence solve the social licence problem?
• Design Together or Fail Separately: Which early decisions make or break a project?

What does the next chapter of European fibre coverage look like? A data-led overview of deployment velocity, investment flows, M&A activity & the emerging gap between coverage and adoption.

As Europe's fibre market matures, the focus is shifting from network build to long-term value creation. From incumbents and wholesale networks to altnets, this panel explores how fibre assets are being assessed, what drives value in today's market, and where investors see the greatest opportunity.

As consolidation accelerates, this panel explores which strategies deliver stability and scale, what live deals reveal about the endgame, and how restructuring can protect infrastructure investment while still generating returns.

• Is the adoption gap (homes connected vs active subscribers) the defining challenge of this decade?
• How is M&A reshaping the competitive dynamic in metro markets?
• Where are the most attractive white-space opportunities remaining in European metro fibre?

As operators move from ambitious rollout plans to large-scale delivery, new challenges are emerging around cost, complexity, labour availability and network modernisation. This presentation examines the practical realities of fibre deployment, the lessons being learned across European markets, and what will be required to accelerate rollout in the years ahead.

Europe’s AI ambitions risk stalling without new fibre backbones. This panel explores why core fibre lags demand, how it constrains data centres and AI clusters, and what investment, policy and partnership models unlock growth.

• Future of Data Centre Fibre.
• Why has core fibre been overlooked, and how do we shift investment priorities?
• How can fibre connectivity enable truly distributed AI ecosystems?
• What practical steps are needed to accelerate deployment? Planning reform/Supply Chain/Collaboration models?

As AI infrastructure expands across multiple locations, the network becomes critical. This session explores how high-performance DCI connects distributed GPU clusters, storage, and compute into a unified AI fabric. Discover how optical transport delivers the massive bandwidth, deterministic low latency, and security needed to move huge datasets, synchronize AI workloads, and scale with confidence.

Three industry leaders. Three big ideas. In these short, high-impact spotlight presentations, attendees will gain rapid insights into the innovations, investments and technologies transforming connectivity across Europe and beyond.

• Spotlight 1: Turk Telekom: The Eastward Shift: Understanding Europe's Data Traffic Evolution
• Spotlight 2: Vodafone: A strategic infrastructure investment with industry-wide implications
• Spotlight 3: Marlink How do satellite technologies work and how to choose the right one for your customers?

• How are investors reassessing IRR expectations as penetration rates are challenging in some markets?
• What role should the EU Gigabit Infrastructure Act and state aid frameworks play in bridging white spots?
• How are debt structures, IRUs, and wholesale agreements evolving to de-risk metro buildouts?

Get stuck in to the morning of Day 1 with Nokia & Verizon! Networking, a short panel on AI & Industry Transformation, followed by a choice of two interactive round table discussions: Next-Generation Leadership in Digital Infrastructure OR Talent Acquisition & Culture for Retention

Alongside the main programme, we’re launching The Outlook, a premium environment for high-level discussion, deal making and closed-door collaboration.

Hosting:

• Digital Infra Leaders’ Summit (invitation only)
• Global Critical Infra Summit (new for 2026), tackling security, resilience and geopolitics in a world where infrastructure is now strategic
• Curated networking from private receptions to community meetups

Beyond the agenda: Where the real conversations happen

Capacity Europe is built as a festival, not just a conference.

Expect pockets of activity across the venue, from hosted happy hours and stage receptions to private dinners, partner meetups and late-night parties.

It’s continuous, high-energy networking, designed to move conversations forward and turn introductions into commercial outcomes.

This is an application-only session, available to registered attendees of Capacity Europe. Places are limited to 100 senior delegates from network operators/cloud infrastructure owners, government and regulation, cloud/hyperscale/neocloud providers. To register your interest, contact liss.boothandford@techoraco.com

Critical infrastructure is increasingly at the centre of geopolitical competition, economic resilience, and international security. This keynote explores the evolving threat landscape facing critical networks, the Alliance's role in protecting vital infrastructure, and the actions governments and industry must take to strengthen resilience against emerging hybrid threats.

Geopolitical risk, hybrid warfare and physical exposure
As cyber, physical, climate and hybrid threats converge, this panel explores Europe’s resilience gaps, evolving security responsibilities, and whether governments and operators are prepared for the realities of critical infrastructure protection.

Resilience by design: securing Europe's connectivity routes

As AI adoption, cloud growth and digital sovereignty reshape infrastructure priorities, route diversity has become a strategic imperative. This panel examines how the industry is building resilient fibre and subsea networks to support Europe's next era of connectivity, compute and data growth.

Network design is no longer driven by efficiency alone. Security mandates, national sovereignty and geopolitical risk now dictate where, how and with whom digital infrastructure is built. So, who really gets to shape Europe’s digital future?

Security, resilience and sovereignty are reshaping how networks are routed, located and interconnected, driving higher costs and trade-offs across fibre, datacentres and subsea as operators balance risk, speed and returns.

• What Has to Stay Local, and What Can Stay Global?
• Is Route Redundancy Insurance or Overengineering?
• Are Interconnection Choices Creating Hidden Risk?

As demand for resilient hybrid networks grows, this panel examines satellite–terrestrial partnerships, addressing last-mile gaps, mobile backhaul, interoperability challenges, evolving low-latency tech, and secure, scalable collaboration models for operators worldwide.

Despite headlines warning of a global capacity squeeze, unprecedented infrastructure investments are driving massive network growth and route diversity. This session explores current market constraints along with the latest bandwidth, infrastructure, and pricing data to provide a realistic outlook on European supply and demand.

Hyperscalers and global crises are reshaping Europe’s subsea connectivity and exposing its fragility. This discussion charts how new partnerships, diversified routes and sovereignty moves can safeguard Europe’s vital undersea lifelines against capacity bottlenecks and geopolitical shocks.

• Hyperscalers or Homegrown: Who Should Control Europe’s Critical Cables?
• One Cut from Chaos: Does Europe Have Enough Route Resilience?
• Edge vs. Atlantic – Will Distributed AI Ease Global Traffic or Exacerbate It?

Enterprises judge connectivity on experience, not price. This panel explores how operators use automation and network intelligence to deliver cloud‑like CX, faster provisioning and transparency without driving up operating costs.

Every infrastructure deal has a yes buried in it. Getting there takes months of manual research, unverified data and human bottlenecks. Experts in site selection, financing and data center operations examine what really slows deals down, and how a marketplace with intelligence built in compresses months into minutes.

 

Voice is becoming an AI‑driven, high‑value service, but fraud is accelerating. This discussion explores how operators integrate identity, analytics and CX data to monetise voice beyond minutes while protecting customers.

• Can Business Messaging Become the Next Major Growth Engine for Operators?
• Fighting AI with AI: How Do Operators Stay Ahead of Messaging and Voice Fraud?
• Who Will Own Trusted Communications: Networks, OTTs, CPaaS Platforms or AI Assistants?

Building Europe’s AI-ready digital infrastructure will cost hundreds of billions by 2030. This session examines who funds it, from private capital to public support, and how models make projects bankable.

AI infrastructure demands unprecedented capital amid uncertain returns. Financiers and operators reveal deal structures, risk strategies, green financing, incentives, and what conditions will unlock investment to sustain Europe’s digital growth.

• Is Europe’s AI infrastructure boom an investor’s dream or a bubble?
• Public Money, Private Projects: What role should governments play?
• New Models for New Builds: From JVs to hyperscaler pre-deals

As AI services boom, Europe must decide where compute sits. This session examines latency, sovereignty and power proximity, showing how policy and customer demand are redrawing Europe’s data centre geography.

Europe’s landscape is decentralising. This panel examines emerging AI hubs, edge growth, and how policy, sovereignty and latency shape location decisions, and who will host Europe’s billion-euro AI factories.

• Core vs Edge: Which workloads go where?
• Nordics vs FLAP: Is cheap power beating low latency?
• Sovereignty: Real concern or red herring?

Rapid build collides with shortages of power equipment, chips and cooling. This panel shares supplier and operator strategies, from standardisation to alternative sourcing, to keep Europe’s infrastructure projects on track.

• GPUs, switches, and the elephant in the room: which shortage hurts most?
• Europe’s Dependency Dilemma: Can we build resilience into our supply chains?
• Speed vs. Spec: Should we build fast or wait for the best tech?

AI demand is outpacing supply, making speed critical. This panel reveals how builders and customers compress timelines through design coordination, demand forecasting and early procurement to gain competitive advantage.

As copper networks are retired across Europe, operators are investing in the next generation of connectivity. From fibre expansion and migration strategies to innovations such as hollow core fibre and advanced optical networks, this panel explores how leading markets are modernising infrastructure and preparing for future demand.

• Who Gets Left Behind in Copper Switch‑Off, and Who Is Responsible?
• What Actually Speeds Migration: Regulation, Incentives or Pain?
• Which Nordic Lessons Travel, and Which Don’t?

Fibre networks sit at the heart of the digital economy, making resilience essential at every layer. Drawing on both infrastructure and cybersecurity perspectives, this session explores how operators can strengthen network reliability, improve preparedness and ensure continuity in an increasingly complex threat landscape.

As businesses become increasingly dependent on digital infrastructure, network resilience is becoming a key differentiator. This panel explores how operators strengthen reliability, improve visibility across their networks, minimise disruption, and build the resilient infrastructure needed to meet rising customer expectations.

• Beyond Compliance: What Does Real Metro Resilience Look Like?
• Who Knows What, When? Making Threat Intelligence Actionable
• Who Pays for Resilience When Customers Don’t See It?

As Europe’s fibre rollout matures, the industry’s focus is shifting from extending coverage to creating greater business value. This session explores how connected infrastructure and collaborative ecosystems are enabling business growth, innovation and long-term commercial sustainability, setting the strategic context for the panel discussion on what commercially successful fibre businesses will look like beyond Tier One markets.

Outside major metros, fibre economics tighten fast. This panel explores how operators make secondary markets viable, which deployment and wholesale models succeed, and when public subsidy remains essential.

• Smart Subsidy or Market Distortion? What Actually Delivers Coverage
• Building Fibre for Lower Density: Which Deployment Models Really Cut Cost?
• Fibre, FWA or Both? Making the Economics Work Outside Core Metros

AI, new traffic patterns and accelerating compute demand are reshaping digital infrastructure economics. This closing panel examines which revenue pools will grow or shrink, how investment priorities will shift, and where operators, platforms and investors must position now to win the next three years.

The chair opens the session with a concise picture of where the industry stands today: the scale of public scrutiny, the planning challenges facing projects across Europe, and why a unified response i …

Presentation of our findings from the leadership survey & overview of leadership discussion from the Digital Infrastructure Leaders' session held on Monday

Discover how data centre operators can turn community engagement from a planning challenge into a strategic advantage through clearer, more transparent and more human communication.

A leading communications professional shares what effective industry storytelling looks like in practice. Not theory, not aspiration: the specific choices that determine whether a message reaches and …

Despite powering the digital economy, the data centre industry continues to face growing public scrutiny and resistance. Drawing on experience from media, public affairs and other highly scrutinised s …

Is the data centre industry suffering from a communication problem, or a trust problem? What can the data centre industry learn from sectors that have faced public scrutiny before it? What should mean …

Chair closes. The key takeaways are confirmed as a post-event publication. Next steps communicated: how the outputs will be shared, who will be credited, and how the work continues beyond October.

A curated space where telco product leads and innovators pressure‑test roadmaps, evaluate emerging business models and monetisation strategies and form the partnerships that generate new revenues and solve customer pain points. Join the Dragons’ Den, demos and roundtables at GrowthX -

Apply to speak or showcase your solution by contacting marketing@capacitymedia.com

• How AI agents will change customer relationships: The true catalysts of NaaS?
• Capturing new network control points: Observability, voice records, sensing

Measure it, predict it, sell it: turning QoS into contracts, not complaints.  

One profile, connect to all: independently verified compliance for wholesale carriers, built once, checked by any counterparty in minutes

Who owns the on-ramp to intelligence? AI capacity lands as islands. The road to it is the bottleneck.

Capacity Connect is agentic transaction infrastructure for data center capacity: AI agents turn one buyer requirement into an RFP, match it to verified operators, draft the proposals and run the deal to close in one streamlined process.

VeLinkX is developing digital twin-assisted AI agents to rehearse network changes, test 5G service performance and investigate failures using existing network data.

GlorifAI turns telecom data into customer intent predictions that AI agents can act on in every conversation, lifting retention and revenue.

The Fibre Investment Summit is an invitation-only, Chatham House discussion bringing together 100 senior digital infrastructure executives for an interactive, boardroom-style exchange. Through expert-led debate, live audience participation and exclusive research insights, the session will explore investment strategies, deployment opportunities, risk and underwriting, platform consolidation, and the evolving pathways to value creation and exit across digital infrastructure.

For information on how to attend The Digital Infrastructure Finance & Investment Summit, please email: alex.radford@techoraco.com

Data center-related capex will maintain its vigorous pace in 2026 and take-up is forecast to continue to exceed new supply and provide immense opportunities for investment. An expert macro-analysis will kick off the summit, delve into global headwinds and highlight the strongest growth areas; seeded with headline findings from the Digital Infra Leaders & Fibre Leaders sentiment surveys. 

Data center-related capex will maintain its vigorous pace in 2026 and take-up is forecast to continue to exceed new supply and provide immense opportunities for investment. An expert macro-analysis will kick off the summit, delve into global headwinds and highlight the strongest growth areas; seeded with headline findings from the Digital Infra Leaders & Fibre Leaders sentiment surveys. 

Everybody claims to have “powered land.” What does investment grade actually mean when the market is moving faster than lenders can define it? 
Why are the biggest allocators building their own vehicles rather than deploying through GPs? Crucially, hearing directly from the allocators setting them up — not just the platforms they've spun out. We will discuss where the large public players fit in and what structures offer the best for various classes of capital owners. 

• Customer type, powered access, contracted revenue quality — the real variables 

• Hyperscaler vs neoscale finance: How do you match 20-year debt with 10-year DC contracts? 

LPs from pension, sovereign wealth, private capital and insurance discuss amongst peers how they build conviction. Regulatory, geopolitical and data sovereignty pose risks - as do power shortfalls and increasingly complex fund structures, what factors will decide realistic ROI in the next 5-10 years and how these challenges can unlock new growth opportunities. 

• How are LPs evaluating AI infrastructure risk vs opportunity? 

• Is the GP-LP relationship shifting decisively to dedicated platforms? 

• Are platforms becoming too large to exit cleanly? 

• What should we read into the recent LLM IPOs — and the nervousness they created? 

• Which pools of capital will actually be there for the next cycle? Do we need to recycle capital faster? 

A closing synthesis of the day's discussions, distilling the most important lessons on investability, platform strategy and exit readiness for the next investment cycle. 

Meet the group at reception, enjoy light refreshments, and prepare for an exciting day exploring digital infrastructure. 

Practical tips on introducing yourself to employers, building confidence, creating a strong LinkedIn profile, and making meaningful connections when meeting companies throughout the day. 

Senior leaders from OpenAI, Meta and TikTok discuss the career journeys that led them to some of the world's most sought-after technology companies, and why roles in telecoms and digital infrastructur …

Dedicated time to visit exhibition stands, speak with employers, meet speakers, explore career opportunities and build professional connections across the industry. 

Explore opportunities in business, marketing, project management, finance and operations.  From securing major deals to managing global projects, discover the diverse careers shaping the digital world …

Students select one interactive discussion hosted by industry professionals.

Recent graduates and apprentices share their experiences joining the industry, what they learned during their first roles, and advice for students considering similar career paths. 

Explore the new career opportunities emerging from the AI revolution and the skills employers will need in the future.