T-Mobile US tapped a trio of AI-RAN Alliance members to build a test facility in Bellevue, Washington, that will be house the next push toward using artificial intelligence (AI) to help control cloud-based radio access network (RAN) and open RAN architectures, a push that is becoming increasingly important as operators begin to deploy open RAN systems.

The T-Mobile US-led initiative will see the carrier partner with Nvidia, Ericsson, and Nokia on an AI-RAN Innovation Center. That facility will house a focused effort on tying together cloud-based RAN and AI development.

The carrier noted in a recent presentation that the goal is to integrate cloud-based RAN and AI using unified infrastructure that can scale to serve millions of mobile users at once.

“AI RAN will enable new AI algorithms to unlock the full potential of wireless networks,” T-Mobile US’ presentation noted. “These AI algorithms would be rapidly developed with software-defined RAN, trained on AI data centers, and fine-tuned with physically accurate digital twins. This will lead to dramatic improvements in spectral and energy efficiencies.”

Analysts have pointed to the benefits AI can bring to the deployment and management of cloud-based open RAN networks, which are more complex orchestration challenges due to the disaggregated multivendor ecosystem. The use of AI could help close performance gaps for open RAN architectures compared with legacy RAN models.

The T-Mobile US-led work is the latest push from the AI-RAN Alliance initiative, which began earlier this year, backed by founding members including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Arm, Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, SoftBank, Nvidia, DeepSig, T-Mobile US, and Northeastern University. That number has since swelled to more than two dozen.

That group’s overriding goal is to steer the use of AI into RANs for better performance, lower operating costs, greater efficiencies, and to support new business models. This work will include using AI to improve RAN spectral efficiency, combine the two for more efficient network utilization, and deploy AI at the network edge to support new services.

T-Mobile US and SoftBank were tapped as lead test operators for the project.

The initiative last month also gained leadership momentum when it announced Alex Choi as head of the group. Choi has previously served in a similar position at the O-RAN Alliance.

ABI Research open RAN research analyst Larbi Belkhit noted in a recent report that the hiring “may be indicative of the situation with open RAN, in general, and the industry placing greater emphasis on developing AI technology for the RAN over creating a more open ecosystem.”

Can AI solve open RAN consternation?

That potential focus change comes at a critical time for the open RAN ecosystem.

Belkhit noted in a recent report that the move also highlights ongoing frustration in the broader open RAN ecosystem despite some important operator commitments, including AT&T’s $14 billion push to start deploying open RAN equipment later this year.

“Despite AT&T’s announcement, the open RAN market, in general, is not progressing as anticipated, fueled by interoperability challenges and incredibly low investment for new infrastructure by mobile network operators (MNOs) affecting all RAN investment, not just open RAN,” Belkhit wrote. “While it is not at a sustainable level, when investment does begin to improve, the main priority of MNOs will be the ‘virtualization’ or ‘cloudification’ of their networks.”

A recent Téral Research report noted that more than 150 communication service providers around the world are actively testing or deploying open RAN systems. However, the market dynamics continue to put financial pressure on vendors.

“As we rightly anticipated, the shift from the early greenfield open RAN adopters, which have completed their network buildouts, to brownfield networks has been slow, and the open vRAN market declined 7% [year-over-year during the first half of 2024],” the firm noted. “In this environment, the sustainability of the large open RAN ecosystem is tested, leading to consolidation, restructuring, recapitalization, and bankruptcy.”

Operators are also voicing concern.

T-Mobile US CEO Mike Sievert noted during the carrier’s most recent investor conference that the cloud-based open RAN model needs further baking.

“There's been a trend for a long time that we're moving in this industry toward a more open RAN architecture, toward software-defined RAN, trying to get all that technology out of the radio and into the cloud for obvious financial benefits, efficiencies, but that has proved kind of elusive at scale around the world,” Sievert said.

Joe Russo, EVP and president of Verizon’s global networks and technology business, told SDxCentral during an interview at last year’s MWC Las Vegas event that the carrier is also waiting on open RAN maturity.

“At this point, what I typically say is we’re doing a lot of testing; we’re very interested in what that comes to be, but we don’t see it today at scale,” Russo said. “It’s not to say that it won’t be at some point, but I think there’s a lot of roads in front of us on the [open RAN] space, so we’ll see how that evolves.”

Russo did note that some of the bigger open RAN challenges remain around interoperability, software, the ability to scale and performance.

“We have very high-performance standards on the Verizon network when it comes to voice, when it comes to data, when it comes to getting on the network, staying on the network and being able to do what you have to do. Generally, you know, it’s a pretty high bar if you’re going to work inside of the Verizon network,” Russo said. “It’s been a challenge to make sure that those performance levels are met. … It’s early. I’m not saying that we’re not interested in it. I certainly will see where it takes us.”

Verizon more recently joined with AT&T to head up a newly funded open RAN hardware and software testing initiative that continues the U.S. government’s efforts toward boosting a leadership position in the geopolitically charged open RAN and 5G ecosystem.

Analysts noted that these combined efforts should be good news for the broader open RAN ecosystem.

“It really is an exercise in patience,” The Futurum Group’s Ron Westfall said during a recent podcast. “This is not unique to open RAN. We’ve seen this with other technologies. But I think it’s really good news overall that AI RAN can actually, at the end of the day, be a good friend to open RAN, and as a result really invigorate the open RAN implementations out there. There are still less than 10% of the overall RAN implementations out there. So that is, I think, going to trend toward the advantage of open RAN, the fact that AI RAN will now become more, I think, prioritized in the planning of the major operators, and certainly, T-Mobile is proving that. And to reiterate, I think AI RAN stands out as a breakout technology because it can significantly enhance the existing open RAN architecture, but also it’s allowing the collaboration that needed to demonstrate that AI RAN can not only fulfill the potential of open RAN, but also quite simply surpass its expectations.”