Bell Canada and Cisco signed a memorandum of understanding on 29 September 2026 to collaborate on a sovereign AI infrastructure offering for Canada, with work planned across three areas, Bell said in its announcement.
Key points
- Bell and Cisco plan to combine Canadian data centre and network services with AI infrastructure and management technology.
- The companies will assess modular deployments using Cisco AI PODs and payment models linked to infrastructure use or reservation.
- Bell and Cohere said on 23 September that a separate AI model was running in production on Bell AI Fabric.
Bell’s Canadian data centre role
Bell said the proposed platform would bring its Canadian data centre space, power, cooling, physical security, connectivity and operations services together with Cisco technology. The companies are targeting government customers, regulated industries and other organisations seeking control over the location and management of their AI systems and data.
Bell said the MOU concerns collaboration on a sovereign AI infrastructure offering for Canada. Bell said the companies intend to develop an approach that would let customers deploy and manage AI infrastructure in Canada, with more flexibility to access or expand capacity. Its announcement identifies training and inference among the workloads the proposed architectures are intended to support.
John Watson, Group President, Business Markets, Bell Cyber, AI Fabric and Ateko, said the collaboration was intended to help Canadian organisations put sovereign AI infrastructure to use. Bell’s contribution would centre on Canadian facilities, connectivity and operations, alongside the technology Cisco proposes to supply.
Canada said 19 more organisations had signed its data centre principles, AI Affairs reported. Bell’s proposed role in the Cisco collaboration is as an infrastructure operator, supplying the physical and network services around which the companies plan to assemble an AI offering.
Cisco AI PODs and consumption models
Cisco would contribute AI infrastructure, security, observability, monitoring and management technology, as well as products from its Sovereign Critical Infrastructure portfolio, according to Bell. The companies plan to assess how Cisco AI PODs — modular architectures for different AI workloads — could work with Bell’s Canadian facilities and services.
Bell’s announcement identifies that assessment as one of three areas of collaboration. The others are building a Canadian platform for sovereign AI and developing commercial models for customers. Bell said the companies would examine arrangements intended to align customers’ costs with the AI infrastructure they use or reserve.
Raj Juneja, President, Cisco Canada, said Cisco’s portfolio is designed to give customers choices in how they construct, protect and manage systems that support critical operations. Cisco and Bell plan to pair those capabilities with Canadian data centre capacity, connectivity and operational services, he said.
Bell characterised the prospective benefits of the MOU as forward-looking statements. Its announcement said those expectations depend on assumptions and are subject to risks that could cause actual results or events to differ. The companies’ stated work on consumption models remains an assessment of how customers could pay to use or reserve capacity.
Bell AI Fabric’s Cohere deployment
The Cisco collaboration follows a different Bell AI Fabric project with Cohere. Bell and Cohere said in a 23 September announcement that a specialised AI model for Bell Cyber’s operations was running in production on Bell AI Fabric infrastructure in Canada. They said the model had been built with Cohere technology and Bell Cyber data and expertise.
Bell and Cohere said that model was being integrated into Bell Cyber’s Autonomous Security Operations Centre to help analysts examine and summarise information during investigations. The companies described it as a tool for supporting investigative workflows, with analysts responsible for assessing threats and directing responses.
The companies said the Cohere model’s AI processing and sensitive information remained in a Canadian-hosted environment. Unlike the Cisco MOU’s proposed infrastructure offering, that project was described by Bell and Cohere as a production deployment within Bell Cyber’s operations.
