Nokia and SoftBank to trial AI-RAN in live commercial network

What happened

Nokia and SoftBank plan to trial AI-RAN in SoftBank's commercial network in Japan in 2027, under commercial traffic conditions; the trial is in a planned status. The trial will run Nokia's RAN software on SoftBank's own platform, built on Nvidia hardware: according to a Nokia press release, Nokia's anyRAN Cloud RAN software will run on AITRAS, SoftBank's AI-RAN platform, using Nvidia's Aerial RAN Computer, whose hardware combines an Nvidia Grace CPU, an RTX PRO 4500 GPU and ConnectX-8 networking. Nokia's MantaRay network management system will be integrated with the AITRAS Orchestrator, which allocates computing resources between AI and RAN workloads, with the aim of testing whether this can be done while still meeting carrier-grade requirements for the radio network. The companies have not said how many sites the trial will cover, where in Japan it will take place or when in 2027 it will start.

Impact and signal

Affected components and suppliers

Source and time

Source: Evertiq · 10/22/2026 · View original source