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If you attended DTW Ignite 2026 in Copenhagen and didn't say "AI" in the first ten seconds of any conversation, people looked at you the way they look at someone who still prints their boarding pass. We counted (loosely, aggressively, and with increasing amusement) what must have been a hundred different variations of AI expert, AI-ready, AI-native, AI-first, AI-powered, and at least three that seemed to be AI followed by a word that had no business being there.
The industry is in full swing, Copenhagen was its loudest speaker. And we loved every second of it.
Wednesday was our day, with three separate sessions. One very full schedule, if you ask me.
Together with our colleagues at EWE Tel, Gauvi and Airbus, we demonstrated what a genuinely common digital platform looks like when it has been built on standards, tested against reality, and designed to hold networks of very different kinds; fibre in the ground, satellites in orbit, and everything in between.
We also continued our participation in the Catalyst Wholesale Broadband initiative, now entering a new phase; one where AI (yes, I’m using the magic word) becomes a practical answer to a problem anyone who has ever lost their internet connection will immediately recognise.
Imagine this… Lines go down. Everyone reaches for the phone. Customer support teams are flooded. Wait times stretch and end-customers get anxious and angry. It is a scenario the telecoms industry has lived with for decades, and "more agents" has never been a sustainable answer.
We have kept our collaboration in this project, and it is taking new directions based on what wholesalers are asking for. The Catalyst framework gives us the space to test and prove those solutions alongside the right partners. It is, frankly, a great opportunity, and we are not taking it lightly.
[Read more about the Catalyst here]
Copenhagen gave us something harder to measure than session metrics; and it was time with the people actually building this industry. Partners, colleagues, potential clients. Conversations that started at stands and finished over dinner. The kind where you leave with more questions than you arrived with, which is usually a good sign.
One point worth making explicitly, because Mitja Thomas (from EWE Tel) made it from the stage during our session ‘IT Architecture Beyond Today’s Limits’: “not everything in the industry is about AI”. We presented the real work and most human aspect of Alvatross and EWE Tel’s collaboration over the past 2 years. The actual journey, the tight deadlines that looked impossible at first and gave me (personally) some sleepless nights, the decisions that weren’t obvious, the transformation that took patience, and the results that made it worth it.
DTW 2026 reminded us why these events still matter. Not for the keynotes. Not for the branded merchandise. For the density of people who care about the same problems, gathered in one place, willing to have real conversations.
