NVIDIA and Nokia Advance AI-RAN: T-Mobile Completes First Commercial Call, Pilots Launch Across Europe
NVIDIA announced that T-Mobile completed the world's first commercial AI-RAN call, while BT, Deutsche Telekom, and Elisa launched pilots. New base station servers were introduced to accelerate the shift toward distributed telecom infrastructure.
At the GTC conference in Berlin on October 21, 2026, US chipmaker NVIDIA announced an expanded partnership with Finnish telecom equipment vendor Nokia and several global operators to bring accelerated computing directly into the Radio Access Network (RAN). This initiative aims to transform traditional telecom networks into distributed intelligence platforms, allowing AI models and applications to run closer to users and businesses at the cell site level.
As a landmark achievement of this announcement, US operator T-Mobile confirmed it had completed the world's first AI-RAN call on its commercial network in Bellevue, Washington. The test utilized NVIDIA's Aerial RAN Computer (ARC) servers and Nokia's CUDA-accelerated anyRAN software, successfully connecting to an existing 5G Standalone core and a commercial smartphone. Meanwhile, UK-based BT, Germany's Deutsche Telekom, and Finland's Elisa announced plans for AI-RAN pilots on their live networks, with BT and Deutsche Telekom explicitly targeting field trials in 2027.
To support dense compute requirements at high-capacity sites, NVIDIA also introduced two new ARC configurations—MGX 2U and MGX 4U. Powered by RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs and offered by partners like Dell and Supermicro, these servers are designed primarily for centralized RAN deployments. Additionally, nine operators across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), including CRA and Etisalat, are building or expanding NVIDIA-powered network infrastructure.
Beyond hardware deployment, NVIDIA highlighted that its open model Nemotron is being integrated into network automation software by Nokia and Cisco to build agents capable of autonomously managing fixed, radio, core, and transport networks. These moves indicate NVIDIA's attempt to extend its data center compute advantage to the telecom edge, reshaping the infrastructure form of next-generation mobile networks through combined software and hardware solutions.