Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:14):
AI is at the heart of a lot of developments in the telecom sector right now. And it's at the core of the AI-RAN Alliance, a new industry group that was announced in February this year. One of the 11 founding members of the Alliance is SoftBank. And in August, Alex Choi, who is now principal fellow of the Japanese Operators Research Institute of Advanced Technology, was appointed as chair of the AI-RAN Alliance. And I'm very pleased to say that we have Alex with us today. Great to see you again. Alex. Thanks very much for joining us. So to start, can you tell us about your new role at SoftBank and at the AI-RAN Alliance?

Alex Choi, SoftBank and AI-RAN Alliance (00:57):
Sure. As SoftBank, I am engaged in promoting AI-RAN Alliance activities as their chair and also the board member from SoftBank. As you may know, I was a founding member of O-RAN Alliance and served the as its chair until June this year. I believe the experience I gained there will be valuable in my role as the chair of the AI-RAN Alliance. In addition, I was the founding chair of Telecom Infra Project (TIP) when it was launched in back in 2016. So going even further back, I was involved in the launch of 3GPP in 1998, participating from the beginning as a delegate of TTA Korea's Standard Bodies. Personally, I feel that these diverse experiences have given me a deeper understanding of the telecom network industry and I hope this experience will be beneficial in my work with the AI-RAN Alliance.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:02):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean that sounds like an invaluable resume for the role you have now. So let's talk about the Alliance specifically. Why does the telecom sector need another industry group? Aren't many established industry bodies already working on the use of AI in the Radio Access Network?

Alex Choi, SoftBank and AI-RAN Alliance (02:24):
Yeah, that's a very fair question. So currently there are three organizations like O-RAN Alliance, 3GPP and TIP, and each of these organizations has taken unique approaches and they contribute to the industry's journey toward more intelligent, efficient and AI-powered mobile networks. AI-RAN Alliance was founded earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress, Barcelona by 11 co-founders. So before I answer to your questions, let me give you some history of ORAN Alliance that I have chaired. As you know, there were 3GPP Edge and Industry Consortium called the CPRi being led by Ericsson and other leading vendors. And all of them tried to hard to standardize the fronthaul interface, but only CPRi consortium warn the market and CPRi is not really a true open interface. So you can ask exactly the same question why creating a new industry alliance or RAN alliance because neither 3GPP and CPRi consortium have not done their job well.

(03:40):
So the question back to your questions, so why new Industry Alliance, AI-RAN Alliance? So it's the same questions. So basically we are driving the openness, innovation, speed and joint effort to driving the commercialization of AI RAN or RAN AI. That's why we set up AI-RAN Alliance and

(04:11):
the mission of AI-RAN Alliance is bridging the gap with the practical implementations, therefore accelerating the RAN AI innovation speed. So while the existing organizations have focused on specification and standard, we, AI-RAN Alliance, is dedicated to providing practical implementation guidance for AI in RAN.

(04:37):
Apparently we, AI-RAN Alliance, we are not SDO, we are not the standard development organization. So AI-RAN Alliance, our focus is more on creating implementation blueprints and benchmarking AI, ML algorithms offering the industry more detailed practical tools to accelerate the adoption of AI in RAN that brings AI driven solution to life in real world scenarios.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (05:07):
Okay. So if we can dig a little bit deeper, I mean what is the alliance actually doing? I see from the website that it's already established a few working groups.

Alex Choi, SoftBank and AI-RAN Alliance (05:20):
Yeah, exactly. We currently set up three working groups.

(05:24):
First, AI for RAN, and this group is focused on exploring how AI, ML technologies can be applied to improve RAN performance. For example, spectrum management, traffic management and optimization and energy optimization, et cetera. And the second working group, AI and RAN, this working group is dedicated to developing a unified computing RAN computing platform that can run both AI and RAN workloads concurrently. So their short-term focus is on GPU based platform to handle the high computation needs of AI applications while simultaneously managing RAN function workloads. The last one, AI on RAN working group, also we can call it a RAN AI, I mean the RAN for AI, and this group is exploring how AI applications such as Edge AI and the real time inferencing can be run effectively on RAN infrastructure.

(06:34):
So the goal here is to ensure that RAN networks can support the needs of low latency AI applications, especially as use cases like autonomous driving smart cities, industrial IoT become more prevalent. So all these three working groups are where the real innovation happens as they bring together experts from different parts of the ecosystem, network operator, vendors and researchers to collaborate on specific AI solutions to ensure their practicality and scalability.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (07:14):
Okay. And also recently there was an announcement by some of the members of the Alliance centered on T-Mobile us. What can we expect to see from the AI ran innovation center that was announced and which is going to be based at T-Mobile US' headquarters?

Alex Choi, SoftBank and AI-RAN Alliance (07:37):
The AI RAN innovation center at T-Mobile US is going to be an exciting development. To my knowledge this center will act as a test bed and also incubation hub for cutting edge AI technologies in radio access network. And they said, T-Mobile said, in their announcement their goal is to bring together startups, researchers, and industry experts to experiment and also validate AI driven RAN solutions and bring their contributions to the alliance to foster the ecosystems.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (08:18):
So SoftBank and T-Mobile US are the only network operator members of the alliance currently. So it seems like a bit of an exclusive club. How can the AI Ran Alliance make itself relevant to the whole network operator ecosystem?

Alex Choi, SoftBank and AI-RAN Alliance (08:35):
Yeah, while it is true, the SoftBank, T-Mobile US are the two founding operator members, but the Alliance is very much designed to be inclusive and open to all players in the whole ecosystems. So since its launch with 11 founding members, the number of new members has steadily increased and we have now grown to 36 members and with the membership obligations still coming in, we expect to grow to at least a hundred members in the very near futures, especially the applications from operators, I mean new operators, have also been consistently submitted and as of today, five operators, additional operators, including my former company, SK Telecom, have already submitted their membership applications. So therefore I believe the number of operators will continue to grow as the alliance produce more visible outcomes. Our mission is definitely to build a diverse and collaborative community from operators to vendors and vendors to researchers and AI innovators.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (09:56):
And you mentioned the number of new companies joining the Alliance, but NVIDIA is obviously playing a very key role in the alliance. It was one of the founding members as well. But is the Alliance also open to the likes of a MD and Intel and other companies that are developing AI chips?

Alex Choi, SoftBank and AI-RAN Alliance (10:16):
My answer is absolutely. We already have ARM as one of the co-founders in addition to NVIDIA. So while I have to admit that NVIDIA has been a strong partners, particularly in the GPU space, the AI-RAN Alliance is an open ecosystem. We are not exclusive to any single vendor, both AMD and Intel as well as other technology companies are definitely welcome to participate and bring their expertise and solutions to the table. AI for RAN requires a range of technologies from GPU to CPU, CPU to NPU, NPU to any other customized AI accelerators. And different companies have different strengths in different areas. So the Alliance goal is once again to be a vendor neutral, focusing on the best solutions for driving AI innovation in RAN. So we really look forward to expanding our ecosystem to include much wider range of technology partners as the AI-RAN Alliance continues to grow and evolve.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (11:33):
Okay, that's great to hear and look forward to hearing about new names joining the alliance in the near future. So Alex, it's been great talking with you today. Thanks very much for bringing us up to speed on developments at the AI Ran Alliance and I look forward to chatting with you again in the near future. Thanks very much.

Alex Choi, SoftBank and AI-RAN Alliance (11:55):
Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you.