Bell Canada is reorienting its core business around artificial intelligence, sovereign compute infrastructure, and digital content streaming as it positions itself for long-term growth, BCE President & CEO Mirko Bibic told the opening session of the ALL IN 2026 conference in Montréal.

Bibic outlined how the telecommunications giant is shifting from traditional broadcasting and legacy telecom toward an AI-powered and digital-first future.

Appearing alongside Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez, Bibic described how Bell’s new operating strategy, reset in early 2025, focuses capital and innovation on three core growth areas: fiber, wireless, and enterprise AI solutions, alongside a comprehensive transformation of Bell Media and its flagship streaming platform, Crave.

“Last year, we kind of reset the company at the beginning of last year with a new capital markets approach and a new operating strategy,” Bibic said during the panel moderated by CBC host Catherine Cullen. “Our new operating strategy was all about going back to kind of our core strengths…and in the Enterprise segment, AI-powered solutions.”

Bibic emphasized that the strategic overhaul heavily targets Bell’s media division, which is undergoing a transition away from traditional television broadcasting toward digital platforms.

“On the media side at Bell Media…what we’re doing there is we’re really turning Bell Media from what was a traditional broadcaster to the leading digital media and content company in Canada,” Bibic stated, highlighting Crave as a key driver of digital expansion.

To support its broader enterprise strategy, Bell is aggressively building out its Bell AI Fabric infrastructure, which includes a planned 1.2-gigawatt data centre expansion in Saskatchewan with associated power generation and tenant compute investments estimated to exceed $50 billion. Bibic said the massive infrastructure play forms the foundational backbone for three rapidly growing AI-driven business units within Bell, including Bell Cyber and digital media operations.

Addressing questions regarding workforce reallocation and structural shifts within the company, Bibic clarified that capital and talent are being actively reallocated away from legacy, declining market segments toward high-growth digital and AI sectors.

“Where there’s growth, we’re hiring a number of thousands of people a year, and when there’s the decline, we have to adjust,” Bibic said. “The traditional areas of our business that are declining, we have to make sure that our cost structure aligns with the revenue profiles… On the other hand are growth areas—Bell Cyber, AI Fabric, digital media at Bell Media with Crave. All these areas are growing significantly.”

Gomez endorsed Bell’s infrastructure investments as vital to establishing domestic compute scale, noting that building full-stack Canadian capabilities allows domestic media, tech, and enterprise players to innovate on home-grown technology rather than relying entirely on foreign providers.

“Since last year, we’ve really oriented the company towards growth, towards innovation, towards digital, and AI is a big component of that,” said Bibic.