Nokia, T-Mobile and NVIDIA have completed what they describe as the world’s first AI-RAN call at a commercial cell site in Bellevue, Washington, marking a significant step in efforts to integrate artificial intelligence with radio access networks.
The call was conducted over T-Mobile’s live production network using Nokia’s Massive MIMO radio, 5G anyRAN software and server infrastructure powered by NVIDIA’s Aerial RAN Computer platform. The setup was connected to a commercial 5G core and commercial user equipment.
The milestone moves AI-powered radio access network technology beyond laboratory testing into a live operator environment, where its performance can be evaluated using commercial network infrastructure and spectrum.
The companies plan to expand their field trials to include additional AI-for-RAN algorithms and AI inference workloads running alongside radio access network functions on shared accelerated computing infrastructure.
Nokia is pursuing a software-defined, AI-native approach to radio access networks, with the aim of improving network performance, supporting future AI-enabled services and contributing to the development of 6G. The company has identified a potential twofold improvement in spectral efficiency as a long-term ambition for the technology.
The Bellevue demonstration builds on a series of collaborative initiatives. T-Mobile announced its AI-RAN Innovation Center in Bellevue in September 2024 to explore the relationship between artificial intelligence and radio access networks. In 2025, Nokia and NVIDIA established a partnership to develop commercial-grade AI-RAN products for Nokia’s radio access network portfolio, with T-Mobile also exploring the technology’s role in its 6G development efforts.
Earlier laboratory testing successfully evaluated Nokia’s anyRAN software on NVIDIA’s GPU-accelerated AI-RAN platform, involving T-Mobile and other operators. The latest demonstration advances that work by validating the technology on a live commercial network.
Beyond improving radio performance, AI-RAN could enable telecom operators to combine connectivity and AI computing on shared infrastructure. This could create opportunities to support distributed AI applications, introduce new AI-based services and improve the use of network resources.
The next phase of trials will examine additional spectrum bands and the ability to run AI inference workloads alongside radio access network functions. The companies are also collaborating on physical AI applications and distributed AI infrastructure as they explore potential commercial uses.
The initiative brings together Nokia’s radio network technology, NVIDIA’s accelerated computing capabilities and T-Mobile’s operational mobile network. Further testing will help determine how AI-RAN performs under real-world conditions and what will be required to deploy it at scale.
