The Telecom Industry Meets the AI Economy

The digital economy runs on connectivity. But while cloud infrastructure became programmable, elastic, and API-driven, telecom workflows remained manual, fragmented, and stuck in decades-old procurement processes.

In this episode of Built for Trust, Nick Lippis sits down with Ben Edmond, Founder and CEO of ConnectBase, to explore why that is finally changing.

As AI workloads accelerate and enterprise architectures shift toward multi-cloud and distributed environments, legacy WAN procurement models are being exposed. Spreadsheets, slow RFP cycles, and opaque serviceability data simply cannot support the demands of the AI economy.

Nick and Ben discuss:

• The four structural shifts forcing telecom modernization
• Why automation increases growth rather than eroding margins
• The rise of programmable connectivity and API-driven exchanges
• How AI is exposing bandwidth, latency, and procurement limitations
• Why control is flowing back to the enterprise

From wholesale marketplaces to enterprise WAN estate intelligence, this conversation outlines how telecom is evolving from a relationship-driven industry to a programmable platform.

The AI economy is here. Now telecom has to catch up.

New episodes of the Built for Trust Podcast come out every Thursday. Subscribe to get notified. See you next week!