From the lab to the live network: Nokia, T-Mobile and NVIDIA complete world’s first AI-RAN call

There are moments in technology development when an idea crosses an important threshold. AI-RAN has just crossed one of them.

Only a year ago, Nokia and NVIDIA announced our partnership to bring AI-RAN to commercial networks. Today, together with T-Mobile, we’ve taken that ambition out of the lab and into a live mobile network, completing the world’s first AI-RAN call at a commercial cell site in Bellevue, Washington.

The call was made over T-Mobile’s live production network using Nokia Massive MIMO radio, Nokia 5G anyRAN software and server infrastructure built on NVIDIA Aerial RAN Computer platform. The site was connected to commercial 5G core and commercial UEs. The next phase of field trials will extend to new AI-for-RAN algorithms and AI workloads running alongside radio access networks on a shared accelerated computing platform.

In practical terms, this means AI-RAN is moving out of controlled lab environments and into the place where it must prove itself: a live operator network, with real spectrum and commercial network infrastructure. 

Turning AI-RAN into network reality

This is not just the world’s first AI-RAN call, it is the world's first software-defined RAN call using accelerated computing. A moment only spoken of, never realized in the last four decades of wireless evolution. A moment when RAN is at parity with the cloud and software worlds, benefitting from continuous CI/CD innovation and evolution. A moment from which there is no looking back.

AI-RAN represents an important evolution of the radio network. Nokia’s vision is to evolve the RAN into an increasingly software-defined, AI-native platform, creating a common foundation for future AI-enabled services and the evolution toward 6G. With AI-RAN, we are on a path to 2x spectral efficiency, an ambition that puts more capacity from the same spectrum at the heart of what comes next.

The Bellevue milestone is a testament to what ecosystem collaboration can achieve. Just one year after announcing our shared ambition, Nokia, T-Mobile and NVIDIA are translating that commitment into tangible progress, bringing together expertise in mobile networks, accelerated computing and real-world network operations to validate AI-RAN in a live commercial network environment.

T-Mobile, Nokia and NVIDIA have been steadily advancing AI-RAN from research and validation toward real-world deployment — and we’ve come a long way in a relatively short amount of time.

• In September 2024, T-Mobile announced an AI-RAN Innovation Center in Bellevue to explore how AI and RAN could benefit each other.
• In 2025, Nokia and NVIDIA formed a partnership to add NVIDIA-powered, commercial-grade AI-RAN products to Nokia’s radio access network portfolio. As part of this, we announced that T-Mobile was working with Nokia and NVIDIA to integrate AI-RAN technologies into its 6G development process.
• Earlier this year, Nokia announced successful lab testing of its anyRAN software on NVIDIA’s GPU-accelerated AI-RAN platform with T-Mobile and other operators.
• The successful call in Bellevue marks the next important step in that progression, bringing AI-RAN validation from the lab into a live commercial network environment.

From one call to a much bigger opportunity

Of course, one successful live-network call is not the destination. The bigger opportunity is to bring connectivity and AI computing together in the network, opening a path toward improved radio performance, new monetization opportunities from AI services and return on investment from operators. 

T-Mobile, NVIDIA and Nokia are already collaborating on physical-AI applications and distributed AI infrastructure as part of that broader vision. Together, we’re moving from technology validation to live networks, field deployments and, ultimately, AI-RAN at scale.

The next phase of field trials will build on this milestone, exploring additional spectrum bands and the ability to support AI inferencing workloads alongside RAN functions. Each step brings us closer to understanding how AI-RAN can deliver meaningful benefits in real-world network environments and ultimately operate at scale.

The people behind the progress

Behind this accomplishment are months of engineering and close collaboration across the companies, from design and staging through site preparation, integration, configuration, testing, optimization and final system bring-up. Combining our strengths, we’re demonstrating how connectivity and AI computing can come together on shared infrastructure, with the potential to improve radio performance, make more efficient use of network resources and enable distributed AI applications.

A huge thank you to everyone who has worked — and continues to work — so hard on this groundbreaking endeavor. Sustained co-innovation that spans technology, integration and operations is how future network architectures become a reality.

Thanks to the shared commitment of Nokia, T-Mobile and NVIDIA, AI-RAN has taken another important step out of the lab and into the network.

And we are only getting started.