ESPOO (dpa-AFX) - Nokia Oyj (NOK), a Finnish telecom and network technology company, on Tuesday announced an agreement with SoftBank Corp. (9434.T, 3AG1.F) to conduct a commercial AI-RAN field trial in Japan in 2027.
The trial will be conducted in a commercial network environment under commercial traffic conditions.
In the planned deployment, Nokia's anyRAN software will be used on SoftBank's AITRAS, its core platform for AI-RAN, with NVIDIA Aerial RAN Computer (ARC), in conjunction with the AITRAS Orchestrator.
Nokia noted that the upcoming field trial will assess key AI-RAN capabilities in a live commercial network environment and represents an important step in SoftBank's efforts to commercialize AI-RAN.
The technology will be moved from laboratory development toward real-world deployment, advancing Nokia's AI-RAN commercialization roadmap.
Pallavi Mahajan, Chief Technology and AI Officer, Nokia, stated, 'By bringing AI and RAN workloads onto common, programmable infrastructure, AI-RAN has the potential to unlock new levels of spectral efficiency while providing the distributed intelligence needed to support physical AI. As the boundaries between network and compute continue to blur, this distributed infrastructure can become a powerful platform for both connectivity and AI.'
The company noted that the trial is expected to contribute to the broader industry transition toward AI-native network architectures. It also explores how operators can introduce new capabilities faster while supporting emerging AI applications at the network edge.
In the overnight trading on the NYSE, the shares were losing 0.88 percent, at $9.00.
In Tokyo, SoftBank Corp. shares were trading at 246.10 yen, down 0.08 percent.
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