• Nvidia’s annual GTC event is underway 
• The GPU developer, T-Mobile US and Nokia are using AI-RAN tech for the deployment of vision AI agents that ‘understand the physical world’ 

If you thought MWC26 had exhausted the supply of AI-native telco news for a while, you were wrong – Nvidia’s GTC (GPU technology conference) event has, among its tsunami of AI-related announcements, a few that hint at how communications infrastructure could support an increasingly automated society. 

Those announcements include an effort by Nvidia, T-Mobile US and Nokia to demonstrate how “next-generation AI-RAN infrastructure can transform the wireless network into a platform for distributed high-performance edge AI computing, creating a foundation for developers to deploy vision AI agents that understand the physical world across cities, utilities and industrial worksites using the Nvidia Metropolis platform.”  

This trio are no strangers – they are all founding members of the AI-RAN Alliance that was launched in February 2024 and, of course, Nvidia last year invested $1bn in Nokia and is now helping to steer the Finnish vendor’s RAN strategy.  

T-Mobile US was, Nvidia notes in this announcement, the “first in the US to pilot Nvidia’s AI-RAN infrastructure with Nokia’s anyRAN software and is now working with select Nvidia physical AI partners, demonstrating how cell sites and mobile switching offices can support distributed edge AI workloads while continuing to deliver advanced 5G connectivity.”

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang noted: “Telecommunication networks are evolving into the AI infrastructure enabling billions of devices – from vision AI agents to robots and autonomous vehicles – to see, hear and act in real time. By turning the 5G network into a distributed AI computer with T-Mobile and Nokia, we’re creating a scalable blueprint for the world’s edge AI infrastructure.”

T-Mobile US CEO Srini Gopalan added: “Turning networks into distributed AI computing platforms to unlock the full potential of physical AI will require ultra-low latency and space time coherency at the network edge for billions of endpoints, and that’s what we’ve built at T-Mobile. With the first nationwide 5G standalone and 5G-Advanced network, we are uniquely positioned to help power a future where intelligent systems don’t wait on the cloud but rely on intelligent networks that allow them to act in real time.”

Nvidia has long realised the importance of having AI compute distributed at the edge of the network, not just in centralised datacentres. It also realised that the sector that already has distributed physical nodes with power supplies, as well as the inherent need for edge computing, is the telecom operator sector and, specifically, the mobile network operators. This is why Nvidia is so keen to see GPUs embedded in radio access network infrastructure, a move that would enable a broad range of real-time AI applications across a wide area. 

As Nvidia sees it, “The transition to AI-RAN built on Nvidia accelerated computing addresses a critical bottleneck in scaling physical AI: Lack of low-latency, secure and ubiquitous connectivity. While Wi-Fi is limited by reach and security, T-Mobile’s 5G standalone network provides the wide-area coverage and guaranteed quality of service required for complex AI agents to operate in busy city intersections, industrial facilities and rural areas. This architecture enables physical AI to offload heavy computation from the device to the nearest edge location. Shifting heavy processing to the network edge allows developers to streamline hardware requirements for individual cameras and robots, making it possible to cost-effectively scale sophisticated AI models across billions of interconnected devices.”

We’re sure to hear more about AI-RAN and the intersection of Nvidia and the communications networking sector during the course of GTC. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV