Speakers

Colin Bannon is the chief technology officer (CTO) for BT Business and BT International. He’s charged with delivering the product technology strategy and solution designs that enable strategic outcomes for more than one million businesses and government organisations in the UK and internationally. BT’s customers include world-leading brands, government and financial services organisations, as well as domestic UK small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) and public sector organisations, including defence and health. BT also provides wholesale products and services to other telecommunication companies in the UK and internationally. Colin Bannon is driving a fundamental shift in how global enterprise networks are designed and consumed, helping move the telecom industry towards a cloud-aligned, Network-asa-Service (NaaS) model. He has led the development and deployment of BT International’s Global Fabric, a cloudnative, API-driven platform built to support multi-cloud and distributed enterprise environments. At a point where many international networks are approaching end-of-life, Colin has championed a transition away from static, hardware-led infrastructure towards on-demand, software-defined AI-ready connectivity, delivered at the edge of hyperscaler ecosystems. This transformation enables enterprises to provision and scale connectivity in minutes rather than weeks, integrate services such as SD-WAN and SASE through a flexible, marketplacedriven model, and access real-time visibility and control over network performance. In doing so, Colin is helping to close the gap between traditional telecom services and cloud consumption models, a critical requirement for multinational organisations, while supporting compliance with evolving sovereignty and regulatory frameworks such as DORA and the EU Data Act. Colin’s influence extends far beyond BT. He is a highly visible industry voice, regularly contributing to industry and government positions on AI-driven network operations, automation, and cyber resilience at major global forums including Mobile World Congress and FutureNet World. Hailed as an industry thought leader with 37,000+ LinkedIn followers and a strong profile across the global technology and telecoms community. In 2025, Colin spearheaded cyber resilience recovery programmes for several UK and global brands following major cyber-attacks. He is a thought leader in digital sovereignty, contributing to a multi-domain industry response to create a foundational taxonomy and definitions. He sits on the UK Government sovereign AI steering board, along with industry and global technology leaders. He is also shaping BT’s platform-based approach to sovereignty aimed at delivering outcomes of stability, security, skills and speed. Colin is active across the telecommunications industry and academia, holding a seat on Mplify (formerly Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF)), and lecturing at Warwick University. In 2024, he won Trailblazer of the Year in the Mobile Europe CTO Awards for his work on Global Fabric. He has been a headline speaker at Cisco Live EMEA in Amsterdam and recently spoke at Digital Transformation World Ignite in Copenhagen. Last year, he hosted MEF at BT’s London head office and earlier this month did the same for the International Business and Diplomatic Exchange’s (IBDE) Artificial Intelligence and Data Advisory Group.