T-Mobile has completed an AI-RAN call on an existing commercial 5G Standalone network in Bellevue, Washington, using Nokia’s CUDA-accelerated anyRAN software, NVIDIA Aerial RAN Computer servers, massive MIMO radios and its existing 5G SA core. NVIDIA describes this as a first commercial-network AI-RAN call, a milestone beyond laboratory demonstrations rather than a network-wide rollout.

European operators are also advancing tests. Elisa completed an over-the-air trial supporting voice, mobile data and AI video analytics on shared ARC infrastructure. BT plans Birmingham pilots in 2027. Deutsche Telekom validated AI-RAN in laboratories in Bonn and Oulu, including AI-enhanced uplink channel estimation, ahead of 2027 field trials. Orange is testing Nokia 5G software on ARC for spectral efficiency and edge AI applications.

NVIDIA introduced MGX 2U and 4U ARC configurations using RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs, with x86 and Vera CPU options. Dell, Quanta Cloud Technology and Supermicro are preparing ARC-ready systems. Nokia is integrating NVIDIA Nemotron models into its Autonomous Networks Suite. NVIDIA says nearly 20 operators have publicly announced collaborations involving Nokia anyRAN and NVIDIA ARC.

AI-RAN Deployment Milestones

Analysis

The T-Mobile demonstration establishes integration of accelerated radio processing with an existing commercial 5G SA core. It does not yet establish broad deployment economics. The announcement does not disclose site count, sustained traffic, power consumption or comparative operating costs.

Elisa’s shared radio and AI workloads and Deutsche Telekom’s channel-estimation tests illustrate two potential benefits: distributed inference capacity and improvements in radio performance. Future field trials will need to quantify spectral efficiency, GPU utilization, energy demand and cost per bit.

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