At Ateme, we have been building cloud-native video technology for several years. Our platform runs on AWS, Google Cloud, and any Kubernetes environment by design. We made that choice early because we wanted our customers to have flexibility: the ability to select the infrastructure that best fits their operational, financial, and compliance requirements.
Over the past two years, broadcasters have been asking new questions about infrastructure, resilience, and operational control, and in the process, they have revealed an important shift in how cloud strategy is being evaluated. For much of our cloud journey, conversations focused on familiar topics. Which platform delivers the best economics for large-scale transcoding? How can live streaming latency be reduced? How do broadcasters prepare for audience spikes during major events?
Today, another question increasingly enters those discussions: sovereignty.
A new set of questions
Starting in late 2024 and accelerating through 2025, we began hearing a different type of question from broadcasters and media organizations.
Not:
“Which cloud offers the lowest cost?”
But:
“What are our options if sovereignty becomes a strategic requirement?”
The discussion was rarely about technology alone. It often reflected wider concerns around operational continuity, regulatory alignment, and long-term control of critical infrastructure. One frequently cited example came from outside the media industry. Following a sanctions-related decision involving the International Criminal Court in The Hague, questions emerged across Europe about dependency on technology providers operating under foreign jurisdictions. The case highlighted a broader reality: infrastructure decisions increasingly involve geopolitical and regulatory considerations alongside traditional technical criteria.
While many of these conversations originated in Europe, the underlying concern is not uniquely European. Governments, broadcasters, telecom operators, and critical infrastructure providers worldwide are examining how dependent they are on external technology platforms and what options exist to increase resilience and operational control.
How the cloud landscape is evolving
Major cloud providers have recognized these concerns and invested heavily in sovereign cloud initiatives. AWS, Microsoft, and Google have all introduced offerings designed to address requirements around data residency, governance, and compliance.
These developments have expanded customer choice. At the same time, some organizations continue to evaluate whether infrastructure ownership, legal jurisdiction, and operational independence should form part of their cloud strategy. Sovereignty is now joining performance, cost, scalability, and reliability as another factor in cloud decision-making.
Why broadcasters are part of the conversation
Broadcasting is increasingly recognized as critical digital infrastructure. For broadcasters, losing access to transcoding, packaging, streaming, or content processing systems during a major live event can have immediate public consequences. National elections, major sporting events, breaking news coverage, and public service broadcasting all depend on reliable, resilient technology platforms.
Public broadcasters in particular often balance commercial, regulatory, and public-interest obligations. As a result, infrastructure decisions may involve considerations that extend beyond pure technology metrics. For some organizations, sovereignty has therefore become part of a broader resilience strategy rather than a standalone compliance exercise.
France Télévisions’ partnership with Scaleway illustrates this trend toward infrastructure models built around local governance and operational independence. As France Télévisions President and CEO Delphine Ernotte Cunci stated: “Tech sovereignty is a strategic priority for our group.”
Evaluating the technology
As these conversations became more common, we wanted to answer a practical question: Can sovereign cloud infrastructure support broadcast-grade video workloads at scale? Based on our testing and validation work, the answer is yes.
Working with Scaleway, we validated Ateme’s cloud-native platform across a wide range of workflows, including live and file encoding, low-latency streaming, just-in-time packaging, cloud DVR, VOD delivery, dynamic ad insertion, subtitling, accessibility services, and immersive video formats. The results demonstrated that sovereign cloud environments can meet the performance, scalability, and operational requirements expected by broadcasters.
Scaleway’s infrastructure also provides access to GPU resources and AI platforms that support media workflows such as automated subtitling, speech translation, content summarization, sports highlights generation, contextual advertising, and accessibility services.
As AI becomes more deeply integrated into media operations, questions around data governance and operational control are becoming part of the broader technology discussion. What we observed is that broadcasters no longer need to view sovereignty and performance as mutually exclusive objectives. Scaleway’s approach is built around European jurisdiction, open technologies, and security frameworks such as SecNumCloud. Combined with competitive economics and the absence of egress fees, it offers an alternative deployment model that some broadcasters are increasingly evaluating alongside traditional hyperscaler environments. Most importantly, the decision is no longer between sovereignty and capability. The technology has matured to the point where organizations can evaluate sovereign cloud options on their operational merits as well as their governance model.
The operational dimension
Technology is only one part of the equation. Broadcasters also need operational expertise, monitoring, support, and accountability. Infrastructure decisions ultimately succeed or fail based on how systems are operated day to day.
This is where BCE plays an important role. With more than 25 years of experience deploying, operating mission-critical media environments and supporting hundreds of customers internationally, BCE provides the system integration competence and operational layer that allows cloud infrastructure and video platforms to function as a fully managed service.
Their perspective is simple: cloud infrastructure only becomes a media service when it is operated end to end. Together, Ateme, Scaleway, and BCE provide an example of how sovereign cloud infrastructure, media technology, integration expertise and operational services can be combined into a complete production-ready solution.
What this means for broadcasters
We did not set out to build a sovereign cloud offering. We built cloud-native video technology designed to run anywhere, because our customers have different requirements and priorities. What has changed is that sovereignty has become part of the conversation for a growing number of organizations. While the discussion may be particularly visible in Europe, the underlying questions around resilience, control, and long-term dependency are increasingly global.
The encouraging finding is that the ecosystem has matured significantly. Sovereign cloud platforms have evolved from emerging alternatives into production-ready environments capable of supporting demanding media workloads. For broadcasters evaluating their next generation of cloud infrastructure, the question is no longer whether sovereign options exist. The more relevant question is which deployment model best aligns with their operational, regulatory, and strategic objectives.
Our role at Ateme remains the same: providing video technology that gives customers the freedom to make that choice.
Explore related insights
Ateme provides broadcast-grade video encoding, packaging, and OTT streaming solutions deployable on any cloud infrastructure. Ateme is a validated technology partner with Scaleway, part of the iliad Group. BCE, part of Bertelsmann/RTL Group, provides end-to-end broadcast and media workflow integration and 24/7 managed operations.