{"id":24265,"date":"2026-03-03T20:47:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T19:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/?p=24265"},"modified":"2026-03-03T20:47:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T19:47:35","slug":"nokia-accelerates-ai-ran-momentum-with-new-partnerships-driving-path-to-ai-native-6g","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/?p=24265","title":{"rendered":"Nokia accelerates AI-RAN momentum with new partnerships driving path to AI-Native 6G"},"content":{"rendered":"

The collaboration marks a strategic milestone in 5G evolution, advancing real-world AI-driven RAN deployments and the transition toward cognitive, software-defined wireless networks<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nokia announced significant progress in its strategic AI-RAN partnership with NVIDIA, including new customer integrations, successful functional tests of GPU-accelerated AI-RAN and a series of groundbreaking demonstrations at Mobile World Congress 2026.
\nThis collaboration underscores the transformative potential of AI-driven radio access networks (RAN) in advancing 5G capabilities and laying the foundation for AI-native 6G. Building on the strategic partnership announced last year, Nokia and NVIDIA are working with leading operators, including BT, Elisa, NTT DOCOMO and Vodafone Group to adopt AI-RAN technologies that enhance network performance and support the explosive growth in mobile AI traffic.
\n\u201cAI is the new workload reshaping networks. That shift requires architectural change across every layer \u2014 including the radio. AI-RAN transforms RAN into a software-driven platform optimized for AI, and with NVIDIA and a growing ecosystem of partners we are progressing from validation to commercial deployment. This is a foundational step toward AI-native networks and 6G\u201d, said Justin Hotard, President and CEO at Nokia<\/p>\n

AI-RAN technology readiness<\/strong>
\nIn collaboration with key customers, Nokia has completed functional tests of its AI and RAN workloads on NVIDIA\u2019s GPU-accelerated AI-RAN platform, showcasing the scalability and efficiency of AI-powered RAN solutions. These tests validate the readiness of AI-RAN for real-world deployments and its ability to deliver enhanced user experiences and unlock new monetization opportunities through advanced AI services. Key customer developments include:<\/p>\n

T-Mobile U.S.<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Nokia, T-Mobile U.S., and NVIDIA have successfully tested GPU-accelerated AI-RAN workloads at T-Mobile\u2019s AI-RAN Innovation Centre at its Seattle headquarters. In T-Mobile\u2019s over-the-air (OTA) lab environment, Nokia\u2019s AirScale Massive MIMO radio operating in the 3.7 GHz (n77) band supported user equipment (UEs) running use cases such as video streaming, generative AI queries, and AI-based video captioning. The trial demonstrated concurrent AI and RAN processing on a single NVIDIA Grace Hopper 200 server using accelerated AI-RAN workloads, highlighting the ability to combine advanced radio access network functions with AI applications on a shared accelerated computing platform.<\/p>\n

Indosat (IOH)<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Nokia and Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) achieved Southeast Asia\u2019s first AI RAN\u2013powered Layer 3 5G call at MWC. The call used IOH\u2019s open, cloud native network with Nokia\u2019s AirScale remote radio heads (RRHs) and RAN software accelerated by NVIDIA GPUs. This milestone proves that AI and RAN workloads can run simultaneously on shared GPU infrastructure in a live operator environment, paving the way for distributed AI intelligence that makes 5G networks more efficient and intelligent and sustainable.<\/p>\n

SoftBank Corp.<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Nokia and SoftBank Corp. (SoftBank) demonstrated how spare AI-RAN compute capacity, identified by SoftBank\u2019s AITRAS Orchestrator, can be used to run third-party AI tasks. This integration marks a key step in transforming the RAN into an AI-enabled platform capable of delivering new AI services and revenue streams beyond connectivity, running external AI workloads on AI-RAN in line with the AI-RAN Alliance\u2019s architectural guidance.<\/p>\n

Expanding AI-RAN Ecosystem<\/strong>
\nNokia has also expanded its ecosystem of AI-RAN partners, who are building the servers and infrastructure for AI-RAN. This includes Quanta and SuperMicro, who join Dell Technologies and build on Red Hat OpenShift for orchestration. The collaboration marks a significant step towards the commercialization of AI-RAN, enabling a wide range of COTS-based choices for telecom operators. By integrating AI into RAN solutions, Nokia and NVIDIA are driving innovation and commercialization at a global scale, enabling operators to lead the transformation of next-generation networks.
\nNokia and NVIDIA are working with Red Hat to enable AI RAN technologies on a common cloud native platform, using Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat AI Enterprise to scale NVIDIA-accelerated RAN and AI workloads across hybrid cloud environments and advance today\u2019s 5G networks toward AI native 6G. Complementing this, QCT\u2019s QuantaEdge EGN77C 2U, built on the NVIDIA Aerial RAN Computer Pro platform and powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO Blackwell GPUs, the NVIDIA Grace CPU, and high-performance networking, provides a compact, energy-efficient edge solution for inline GPU-accelerated RAN processing. Integrated with Nokia\u2019s anyRAN approach, it offers operators a flexible, software-defined architecture for evolving from current 5G deployments to future AI RAN and 6G capabilities across both Cloud RAN and purpose-built RAN environments.
\n\u201cThe telecommunications industry is at a turning point. Instead of upgrading networks in big, hardware-heavy cycles, we now have the opportunity to build them as fully software-driven systems. By running AI and radio access networks on the same accelerated computing platform, we make sure the network supports business needs \u2014 not the other way around. Physical AI requires an intelligent network underpinned by AI RAN so operators can fully harness distributed intelligence across every layer of the network. Our AI RAN partnership with Nokia helps operators move faster, operate more like cloud companies, quickly launch new AI services, and smoothly evolve toward next-generation, AI native networks.\u201d, said Ronnie Vasishta, Senior Vice President of Telecommunications at NVIDIA
\n\u201cThe addition of leading American, Asian, and European operators, alongside a growing ecosystem of partners, signals that AI-RAN is gaining traction and has become a strategic direction for the industry. In the meantime, the completion of GPU-accelerated RAN tests in various configurations and scenarios marks a step up in maturity. We look forward to seeing the demonstrations of AI-RAN\u2019s operational readiness during MWC26. \u201c, said R\u00e9my Pascal, Practice Leader for Mobile Infrastructure at Omdia<\/p>\n

AI-RAN at MWC26<\/strong>
\nAt MWC26, Nokia\u2019s booth 3B20 in Hall 3 will feature multiple live demonstrations of AI-RAN technologies, highlighting their role in enabling cognitive, software-defined radio systems. This includes Vision AI with reasoning capabilities from Vaidio, a delivery robot from ServeRobotics that can transform retail and the use of the radio network itself as a sensor for the physical world. There will be a demonstration of how spare GPU capacity in the distributed AI RAN network can be monetized by offering AI compute to external customers. Nokia\u2019s demonstrations also showcase how AI-RAN can optimize network operations, improve energy efficiency and support new AI-driven applications.<\/p>\n

Above, Justin Hotard, President and CEO at Nokia<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The collaboration marks a strategic milestone in 5G evolution, advancing real-world AI-driven RAN deployments and the transition toward cognitive, software-defined wireless networks Nokia announced significant progress in its strategic AI-RAN partnership with NVIDIA, including new customer integrations, successful functional tests of GPU-accelerated AI-RAN and a series of groundbreaking demonstrations at Mobile World Congress 2026. This … <\/p>\n

Continue reading \u00abNokia accelerates AI-RAN momentum with new partnerships driving path to AI-Native 6G\u00bb<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,60,56],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24267,"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24265\/revisions\/24267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomkh.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}