T-Mobile has paired with Nvidia and Nokia to complete what the companies claim to be the world's first AI-RAN voice call.

The call was completed from a commercial cell site in Bellevue, Washington, where US carrier T-Mobile is headquartered.

The call was carried out over T-Mobile’s live production network using Nokia Massive MIMO radio, Nokia 5G anyRAN software, and server infrastructure built on Nvidia Aerial RAN Computer platform. In a blog post, Nokia noted that the site was connected to commercial 5G core and commercial user equipment.

It builds on comments made by T-Mobile's CTO, John Saw at Mobile World Congress, that the operator was hopeful it would have trial units to play with this year, when Nokia mapped out its AI-RAN masterplan, with support from Nvidia and a clutch of carriers, including T-Mobile

According to the vendor, the voice call is significant as it means that AI-RAN is moving out of controlled lab environments and into live operator network, with real spectrum and commercial network infrastructure.

The next phase of field trials will extend to new AI-for-RAN algorithms and AI workloads running alongside RAN on a shared accelerated computing platform.

Nokia has big ambitions to push AI-RAN, and sees the technology as a key cog in helping to evolve the RAN into a more software-defined, AI-native platform, ahead of the 6G era.

"AI-RAN represents an important evolution of the radio network. Nokia’s vision is to evolve the RAN into an increasingly software-defined, AI-native platform, creating a common foundation for future AI-enabled services and the evolution toward 6G," said Pallavi Mahajan, chief technology and AI officer, Nokia. "With AI-RAN, we are on a path to 2x spectral efficiency, an ambition that puts more capacity from the same spectrum at the heart of what comes next."

The company's vision around implementing AI into the radio access network is one of the main reasons the vendor has formed closer ties to GPU giant Nvidia.

The two companies first penned an agreement to develop AI-ready RAN solutions back in 2024, long before Nvidia became an investor in the vendor.

But mobile carriers have also been looking into AI-RAN during this timeframe too, including T-Mobile, which announced an AI-RAN Innovation Center in Bellevue back in September 2024.

Earlier this year, the three companies also announced they are working with other partners to deliver physical AI applications over distributed Edge AI networks.

"The next phase of field trials will build on this milestone, exploring additional spectrum bands and the ability to support AI inferencing workloads alongside RAN functions. Each step brings us closer to understanding how AI-RAN can deliver meaningful benefits in real-world network environments and ultimately operate at scale," added Pallavi.

Nokia's first commercial AI-RAN products aren't expected to go live until next year.

T-Mobile isn't the only carrier working with Nokia and Nvidia to push AI-RAN. A host of other carriers, including Indosat, SoftBank Corp, BT, Elisa, Vodafone Group, Orange Group, A1 Group, Chunghwa Telecom, du, e&, Mobily, stc, TPG Telecom, and Zain Saudi, are also working with the companies.