T-Mobile US teams with Nvidia, Ericsson and Nokia on AI-RAN

San Francisco – To further advance its 5G leadership position that is already years ahead of its closest competitor, T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) today announced a collaboration with NVIDIA, Ericsson and Nokia to design and drive the future of mobile networks with AI at the center, revolutionizing the capabilities of radio access networks (RAN) to serve customers in unprecedented ways. Leveraging T-Mobile’s 5G leadership, the NVIDIA AI Aerial platform and Ericsson’s and Nokia’s global leadership in telecommunications solutions, the consortium of companies, all founding members of the AI-RAN Alliance, are investing in an industry-first AI-RAN Innovation Center based in Bellevue, Washington, focused on bringing RAN and AI innovation closer together to deliver transformational network experiences for customers through the development of AI-RAN.

AI-RAN will dramatically improve customers’ real-world network experiences and ever-growing demand for increased speeds, reduced latency, and increased reliability needed for the latest gaming, video, social media and augmented reality applications they like to enjoy on their mobile and fixed wireless devices. AI-RAN will do this by leveraging billions of data points to devise algorithms that determine optimal network adjustments for maximum performance and to predict real-time capacity where customers need it. AI will not only power RAN performance and automate operations but will supercharge mobile network infrastructure to simultaneously run third-party AI application workloads at the network edge. AI-RAN comes in conjunction with other 5G Advanced features being rapidly developed with T-Mobile’s partners. AI-RAN concepts will be built in an open and containerized manner like Open RAN, with virtualized RAN and Core components managed from a central cloud, but AI-RAN is a game-changing technology because it will enhance the current Open RAN architecture with the addition of the accelerated computing that GPUs can bring to the intense network processing workloads of the future. In other words, this partnership aims to show that AI-RAN will make the promises of Open RAN more viable, while also going beyond.

“Just like T-Mobile led in 5G, we intend to lead in the next wave of network technology, for the benefit of our customers,” said Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile. “AI-RAN at T-Mobile will be all about unlocking the massive capacity and performance that customers increasingly demand from mobile networks. AI-RAN has tremendous potential to completely transform the future of mobile networks, but it will be difficult to get right. That’s why T-Mobile is jumping in now to help lead the way with our partners. This collaboration between T-Mobile, NVIDIA, Nokia and Ericsson will truly define what’s next in mobile networks in the 5G Advanced era and beyond, and drive real progress where it’s needed. This group of visionaries will work together at our new Bellevue AI-RAN Innovation Center, and the partnership will not only propel the mobile network industry forward, but also has the potential to eventually advance many others as well.” 

“AI will reinvent the wireless communication network and industry — going beyond voice, data, and video to support a wide range of new applications like generative AI and robotics,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "NVIDIA AI Aerial is a platform that unifies communications, computing and AI.  Working closely with the industry’s leaders, we will extend AI traffic to wireless networks and use AI to reinvent wireless communications.”

“Ericsson is excited to contribute to the 'Joint AI-RAN Innovation Center', which is set to drive standardization, industry alignment, and accelerate the adoption of AI-RAN technologies. This paves the way for potentially limitless innovations in network performance, reliability, and efficiency,” said Börje Ekholm, President and CEO of Ericsson. “As a founding member of the AI-RAN Alliance, we are not only committed to positioning the United States as a leader in the commercialization of AI-RAN solutions but also to exploring and harnessing future opportunities in multi-purpose cellular and AI-optimized networks.”

“AI is a game-changer for every industry, but particularly in telecoms where it will revolutionize networks and enable a variety of new applications,” said Pekka Lundmark, President and CEO, Nokia. “Our U.S headquartered Nokia Bell Labs is leading our global AI research so it is a natural fit to extend our partnership with T-Mobile on the development of their AI-RAN Innovation Center in Bellevue, Washington. We look forward to collaborating on new AI-RAN innovations to transform network security, performance and efficiency with the aim of yielding savings in network operations and increasing monetization opportunities for operators.”

A first-of-its kind AI-RAN cloud-based multipurpose network will have the potential to support not only traditional telecommunications workloads (core network and radio access network: RAN) but also AI workloads (internal and external AI as a Service or AIaaS, a cloud-based paradigm that provides access to AI capabilities in T-Mobile’s network without the need for dedicated, in-house infrastructure). With increased capacity, energy efficiencies and improved resiliency, the same platform will carry voice, video, data, and also new generative AI applications, and have the ability to make contextual AI-powered decisions around network performance and traffic routing for different applications and circumstances. Customers will benefit from better contextual, predictive and frictionless experiences on their devices. AI-RAN will also create significant enterprise cost savings and revenue growth that could also be applied to a variety of other businesses and industries.

The new AI-RAN Innovation Center will further accelerate the mission of the AI-RAN Alliance, which was announced in February 2024 at GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with a mission to enhance mobile network efficiency, reduce power consumption and retrofit existing infrastructure to unlock new economic opportunities for telecommunications companies with AI, facilitated by 5G and setting the stage for global leadership on 6G. T-Mobile, NVIDIA, Ericsson and Nokia were all founding members, together with other technology and industry leaders. 

More on NVIDIA’s AI Aerial platform here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDbq0OiaTdE