How ready are the UK’s regions for AI?

Can the UK’s regional connectivity support the next phase of AI growth? We spoke to 250 enterprise IT leaders and 100 service providers nationwide to find out.

Neos Networks | 1 October 2026

AI is taking off nationwide

AI assistants. Chatbots. Smart devices. AI is becoming part of everyday life. It's already being deployed across UK industries, from manufacturing and life sciences to media, energy and financial services.

As AI moves from training to inference, where trained models power real-world applications, workloads will increasingly run closer to end users. Demand for network capacity is set to soar, reshaping networks from core to edge.

Is the UK’s regional connectivity ready to support this next phase of AI growth?

To find out, Neos Networks surveyed senior IT infrastructure decision-makers at enterprises and service providers across the country.

Foundations for growth

Our survey suggests the UK has credible connectivity foundations for regional AI growth. Enterprise respondents see AI opportunities emerging across multiple regions.

Over the next year alone, 78% believe their current connectivity is mostly or fully prepared for a two-to-three-times increase in AI workloads.

However, there’s a paradox in the data. Despite this confidence, regional network constraints are already shaping where, how and even whether organisations can deploy AI at scale.

Proximity is critical

A key issue is proximity. Many enterprise-operated AI workloads need to be deployed close to end users to achieve the required latency and performance.

Nearly half (47%) of enterprise respondents say the AI applications they run need to be deployed in the same UK region as the end users. That includes private AI applications built on corporate data, model training environments and latency-sensitive inference services. Around a fifth (22%) of enterprises said deployment is needed within the same metro area.

So local connectivity is becoming a key factor in deciding where and how AI lands.

Reshaping AI plans

Regional infrastructure constraints are already forcing organisations to rethink where and how they deploy AI.

Overall, 92% of enterprise respondents say local connectivity infrastructure affects decisions about where to deploy or expand AI workloads.

Over the last two years, 38% say they’ve kept workloads more centralised than planned, 36% used cloud instead of regional or edge deployment, and 34% have moved workloads to another UK region (multiple responses allowed).

Regional disparities, opportunities

Can local infrastructure support AI where enterprises need it? Or does it force workloads to be centralised, relocated, reduced or delayed? A digital divide is emerging between regions that can and can’t support AI at scale.

While our survey highlighted regional disparities, it also suggests several regions are set to become AI hubs.

Asked which region is most relevant to their organisation’s AI strategy over the next two to three years, 42% of enterprise respondents naturally picked London. But they also saw opportunities emerging across multiple UK regions (see report for details).

The regional picture also varies by sector. Different industries are likely to drive distinct regional AI growth corridors, reflecting local sector expertise.

End-to-end growth, data sovereignty

As AI use grows nationwide, our service provider research points to how networks will evolve in the regions.

Almost all (96%) see a shift towards inferencing or edge delivery over the next two to three years. But where do they expect AI-driven workloads to generate the greatest traffic growth? Opinions were divided across edge, metro, access, data centre interconnect and core networks (see report for details).

Data sovereignty is another key issue. Nearly all (97%) service providers say that data sovereignty and using local infrastructure are important to customers deploying AI workloads on their networks, with around half saying they’re very important.

In short, service providers are expecting AI to drive end-to-end network growth, while data location and local infrastructure remain critical for many applications.

Regional readiness, national opportunity

With world-class research, rapidly expanding data centres and government-backed AI Growth Zones, the UK has set its sights on becoming an AI superpower.

However, realising that ambition nationwide ultimately depends on the infrastructure connecting it all.

Our research shows large enterprises across sectors see AI opportunities emerging across several UK regions, not just London and the South East.

So regional AI readiness is a national opportunity. But how do we build the connected foundations for regional AI growth?

Download the report for insights on:

Which UK regions enterprises see as most important to their AI strategies
How connectivity is influencing enterprise AI deployment decisions across the UK
How service providers expect AI-driven network capacity to scale in the coming years
What enterprises and service providers believe is needed to support the next phase of AI growth