More than one-third of U.S. counties do not have a single surgeon, and 83 million people live in health care professional shortage areas and must travel three times farther to undergo common surgical procedures.1 This challenge is magnified as rural hospitals and healthcare systems face financial pressures and labor shortages. Remote robotic procedures, which include any surgical, diagnostic or interventional procedure performed using a device or robotic system, offer an innovative approach to help close the care gap and reshape critical access to expert care.
To make remote procedures a reality, highly secure and reliable connectivity is vital. That is why Sovato, the world’s first and only robot-agnostic platform to enable remote procedure programs for healthcare organizations, turned to AT&T Business. We’re supporting Sovato’s solution to unlock life-changing medical innovations and expand access to top surgical, interventional and diagnostic expertise.
Sovato’s comprehensive solution delivers the global connectivity, clinical workflows, data integration and telepresence capabilities required for a physician to safely perform remote procedures at scale. In Nov. 2025, Sovato closed an oversubscribed Series B funding round, empowering them to further transform how healthcare organizations deliver and scale procedures and minimally invasive, robotic-assisted surgeries.
The Challenge: Connectivity for Mission-Critical Care
While the upside of remote procedures is clear, success hinges on several non-negotiable requirements, including fast, reliable and highly secure connectivity. That’s because every millisecond counts when a patient’s life is at stake.
“Sovato’s mission to create access to the highest quality surgery and procedures for everyone, everywhere, is incredibly personal,” said Cynthia Perazzo, co-founder and CEO of Sovato. “To achieve our business goals, we require connectivity partners that can support our expansion worldwide and strict performance requirements. AT&T stood out for their willingness to work alongside us, helping us rapidly test, validate and implement the highly secure, high-performance connections that are necessary to deliver connected, real-time and remote healthcare.”
Sovato’s solution comprises a “surgical-grade network,” meeting the highest performance guidelines outlined in the Expert Consensus-Based Technical Guidelines for Remote Robotic-Assisted Surgery and Procedures2, which Sovato helped co-author with a consortium of other industry leaders. These guidelines, published in the World Journal of Surgery in June 2025, establish the network performance benchmarks needed for safe, effective remote procedures, emphasizing reliability, security and maximum uptime.
The Solution: A Collaboration Built on Trust and Expertise
To establish a surgical-grade network, Sovato teamed up with AT&T Business to deliver a global, robust solution tailored to the unique demands of remote procedures. Our expansive network reach, reliability and deep commitment to customer success ideally position us to support Sovato’s needs and help scale their mission.
Sovato relies on our connectivity solutions to support point-to-point data transmissions required for its remote procedure platform. Specifically, Sovato leverages AT&T’s Wavelength Long-Haul network to establish highly secure connections between data centers and customer sites—a foundational component that meets Sovato’s stringent bandwidth and reliability requirements.
Building on this advanced connectivity, Sovato orchestrates a suite of platform services, bringing uncompromising safety, security and scalable performance for clinically sensitive, high acuity use cases. Combined with AT&T services, the Sovato Network offers a solution that delivers consistent latency, minimal jitter and packet loss with isolated, dedicated network capacity. Sovato’s platform services include:
- Network Allocations to ensure network resources are available for every remote procedure, while brokering many simultaneous connections
- Network Control that dynamically connects remote consoles and systems while providing real-time performance visibility
- Data Isolation that ensures sensitive data is securely transported and stays within the health system(s) providing care
- Fleet Management to monitor device health across the Sovato Network
Beyond AT&T Wavelength connectivity, Sovato worked with AT&T’s Proof of Concept Labs to experiment with and evaluate alternative access technologies, including AT&T Virtual Private Network (VPN), AT&T Dedicated Internet and AT&T Satellite Solutions such as low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite. This collaborative approach allows Sovato to validate emerging technologies in response to the evolving landscape, delivering the best solution for each unique use case. By testing and refining these solutions in real-world environments before large-scale deployment, Sovato confirms the network consistently meets the stringent standards required for procedural or surgical applications.
The Impact: Unlocking the Future of Connected Care
Our collaboration with Sovato is driving a meaningful change in how healthcare is delivered and accessed. AT&T’s white-glove service, fast deployment and exceptional operational support have improved Sovato’s network performance and reliability—critical factors in supporting safe, real-time remote procedures spanning hundreds to thousands of miles.
By leveraging AT&T’s connectivity, Sovato has realized tangible benefits that are paving the way for the future of connected healthcare.
- Improved Uptime and Reliability: AT&T’s supports Sovato’s ability to deliver the consistency and performance required for mission-critical remote procedures, minimizing downtime and maximizing patient safety.
- Faster Deployment: AT&T’s expedited deployment and operational support have enabled Sovato to scale faster, bringing its solution to more healthcare organizations and patients. For example, in a recent customer installation, Sovato was able to implement a dedicated AT&T Fiber network two months ahead of schedule.
- Global Scalability: AT&T empowers Sovato to extend its reach, allowing them to bring world-class expertise to more communities.
- Validation of Emerging Technologies: Through its collaboration with AT&T’s Proof of Concept Labs, Sovato can rigorously test and validate new network technologies, ensuring readiness for the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape.
The impact of remote procedures extends far beyond technology. This new model of care is positioned to transform healthcare by expanding access in rural and underserved communities, reducing disparities, promoting global equity, improving patient outcomes and lowering the total cost of care.
Building the Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s Breakthroughs
Our engagement with Sovato is about more than solving today’s connectivity challenges. It’s about building the infrastructure for tomorrow’s life-saving medical breakthroughs. Together, we are proving that when you combine world-class innovation with highly secure, reliable connectivity, you can unlock new possibilities for patient care, operational efficiency and clinical excellence.
As the healthcare industry looks to the future, Sovato and AT&T are leading the way, proving that the right technology can redefine what’s possible, and help ensure that medical expertise has no boundaries.
