Nokia and SoftBank to Run Commercial AI-RAN Field Trial in Japan in 2027

Nokia announced on October 16, 2026, that it has reached an agreement with Japanese operator SoftBank to conduct a commercial AI-RAN field trial in Japan in 2027. The trial will validate key AI-RAN capabilities under real commercial network conditions and live traffic.

The trial will integrate Nokia's AI-native anyRAN Cloud RAN software, SoftBank's AITRAS platform and orchestrator, along with NVIDIA ARC-Pro reference designs and accelerated computing platforms powered by Grace CPUs. The platform includes NVIDIA Grace CPU, RTX PRO 4500 GPU, and ConnectX-8 networking components, providing the compute power and high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity needed to run commercial RAN workloads on cloud-native infrastructure.

Pallavi Mahajan, Nokia's Chief Technology and AI Officer, said that running AI and RAN workloads on common programmable infrastructure could improve spectrum efficiency and deliver distributed intelligence for Physical AI. Ryuji Wakikawa, SoftBank's Senior Vice President and CTO, described the trial as an important milestone in moving AI-RAN from concept to deployment. Nokia unveiled what it called the industry's first commercial AI-RAN platform in July 2026 after receiving a $1 billion investment from NVIDIA. Omdia analyst Remy Pascal noted that 2027 will be the real test of whether AI-RAN delivers its promised benefits in large-scale, dynamic network environments.