The AI RAN Alliance launched at MWC this week
The effort started with SoftBank and Nvidia and they’re working with T-Mobile, AWS, Arm, DeepSig, Ericsson, Nokia, Microsoft, Northeastern University and Samsung
Some question whether it’s a sales and marketing ploy
MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS, BARCELONA – It’s one thing to question whether claims about AI are true. It’s another to question whether a consortium claiming to be all about AI is really open or not.
The AI-RAN Alliance launched this week with the intention of bringing AI into the Radio Access Network (RAN).
The founding members of the alliance are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Arm, DeepSig, Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, Northeastern University, Nvidia, Samsung Electronics, SoftBank and T-Mobile. Their mission is to use AI to improve network efficiency, reduce power consumption and basically set the stage for new revenue opportunities.
The industry is full of alliances – think the O-RAN Alliance and TIP – and they typically release bylaws and invite others to the party. Did founders Nvidia and SoftBank cherry-pick the members of the new group as part of a mostly sales and marketing gimmick? That’s a question Fierce heard in the halls of MWC.
T-Mobile’s take
Fierce found T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer John Saw amid the magenta walls of the Deutsche Telekom booth this week. He said a lot of the AI use cases we see today are for customer engagement and there’s a lot of untapped potential for AI in the network.
“I think we want to invest a similar amount of effort and time on what AI can do for RAN,” he said.
There are several aspects to the AI-RAN Alliance’s mission, which includes using AI for improving spectral efficiency, generating new revenue opportunities and using it in relation to things like interference cancellation and dynamic resource management.
“There’s a lot of good ideas being bounced around,” Saw said. “You’ll probably start seeing some interesting use cases within the next year.”
SoftBank’s intentions
Talks related to the creation of the alliance started about six months ago, according to Ryuji Wakikawa, VP and head of SoftBank’s Research Institute of Advanced Technology.
“We spend huge money on the base stations and towers and so on,” he told Fierce. “We need to find another way” to make those investments pay off, and AI presents enormous opportunities.
How telecom operators incorporate AI into business network operations and technology is important, but they need an entire ecosystem to do it, he said. That’s one of the reasons they formed the AI-RAN Alliance.
Wakikawa insisted other operators are invited to join. “It’s an open alliance,” he said. “Most important is developing the ecosystem. We need a whole ecosystem including vendors, customers and operators.”
In the halls of MWC, Fierce caught up with Igal Elbaz, CTO of Network at AT&T, and asked whether AT&T would consider joining the AI RAN Alliance. He said it’s something he would consider, but if AT&T were to do that, it would first notify the alliance before telling Fierce.
Deutsche Telekom is not a member of the AI-RAN Alliance and doesn’t have immediate plans to join, but DT Group CTO Abdu Mudesir said the alliance is a positive move and DT will learn about the progress of AI in the RAN through the participation of T-Mobile US.
“If we see value, then we will of course join it,” he said.
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