• Nokia has been working hard with its investor Nvidia to get GPU-based RAN technology into mobile networks
• Japan’s SoftBank Corp. has long been on board with the AI-and-RAN concept and long ago developed its own AI-RAN solution, AITRAS, in partnership with Nvidia
• Now SoftBank is to conduct a field trial of a technology stack that combines its AITRAS with Nokia’s anyRAN software

Having been promoted for more than two years as the future model for mobile network access architectures, AI-RAN technology – specifically, the combination of RAN software running on GPU-based hardware, known as AI-and-RAN – is making its way into a field trial in Japan courtesy of some of the concept’s main supporters, namely SoftBank Corp, Nokia and Nvidia. 

SoftBank Corp, Japan’s third-largest mobile operator (behind NTT Docomo and KDDI) with just over 41.1 million mobile customers, is to conduct a field trial in 2027 “in a commercial network environment under commercial traffic conditions”, the partners announced. 

They will integrate Nokia’s anyRAN software with SoftBank’s own AI-and-RAN platform, AITRAS, which the Japanese telco first developed in partnership with Nvidia as long ago as 2024 and which comprises Nvidia’s GPU-based Aerial RAN Computer (ARC) along with the AITRAS Orchestrator software. The ARC platform incorporates an Nvidia Grace CPU, Nvidia RTX PRO 4500 GPU and the vendor’s ConnectX-8 network interface card (NIC), “providing the computing and high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity needed to run commercial RAN workloads on cloud-native infrastructure,” noted Nokia. 

“The AITRAS Orchestrator will support the orchestration of AI-and-RAN workloads within the trial environment, while Nvidia’s programmable accelerated computing platform and Nvidia CUDA ecosystem provide a software-defined foundation for continued AI-RAN innovation and an evolution path toward AI-native 6G. The trial will also demonstrate how Nokia’s AI-native anyRAN software can operate within the SoftBank AITRAS platform architecture, highlighting deployment flexibility beyond traditional RAN implementations,” the Finnish vendor added.

The trial “will assess key AI-RAN capabilities in a live commercial network environment and represents an important step in SoftBank’s efforts to commercialise AI-RAN. It will also advance Nokia’s AI-RAN commercialisation roadmap by moving the technology from laboratory development toward real-world deployment,” stated Nokia, which added that the partners will “explore how AI-and-RAN workloads can be orchestrated on a common platform while preserving carrier-grade RAN operational requirements”. In addition, SoftBank and Nokia “will also explore AI-RAN’s potential to support richer AI-driven experiences, lower-latency services and new applications powered by real-time intelligence. Future use cases could include physical AI, immersive digital experiences, robotics and autonomous systems that require close interaction between AI and connectivity.” 

Ryuji Wakikawa, CTO at SoftBank Corp, stated: “Our planned field trial with Nokia will mark a significant milestone in AI-RAN’s transition from concept to execution. We will integrate Nokia’s AI-native anyRAN into our AITRAS platform as its RAN component, with the AITRAS Orchestrator working in coordination with Nokia’s RAN and MantaRay [network management software]. We are excited to begin this next phase of validation with Nokia, paving the way for a new era of networks that deliver both connectivity and AI services.”

Pallavi Mahajan, chief technology and AI officer at Nokia, added: “Our agreement with SoftBank marks an important step toward the future of AI-native networks. By bringing AI-and-RAN workloads onto common, programmable infrastructure, AI-RAN has the potential to unlock new levels of spectral efficiency while providing the distributed intelligence needed to support physical AI. As the boundaries between network and compute continue to blur, this distributed infrastructure can become a powerful platform for both connectivity and AI. Together with SoftBank and its AITRAS platform, we are laying the foundation for networks that go beyond connectivity to enable real-time AI services and accelerate the evolution toward AI-native 6G.”

Nokia has always been on board with the AI-RAN concept, but its efforts have accelerated since Nvidia, which is keen to see its technology deployed by mobile operators around the world as quickly as possible, pumped $1bn into Nokia in October last year. In July this year, Nokia unveiled what it called the “industry’s first AI-native RAN platform” (a combination of its anyRAN software with Nvidia’s Aerial platform) and has been adding to its mobile operator engagements throughout 2026 – see Nokia bangs louder on the AI-RAN drum.

It should be noted also that Nvidia, Nokia and SoftBank Corp. were all founding members of the AI-RAN Alliance, which was unveiled in early 2024. 

For more on what mobile network operators are thinking about AI-RAN, check out TelecomTV’s next free-to-download report, AI in the RAN, which is based on the results of a telco executive-only survey and which will be available for anyone to access in TelecomTV’s reports section by 23 October. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV