Several major tech and telecom players are joining the AI-RAN Alliance, an interest group that wants to investigate how AI can improve telecom networks.
Founding members include Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung, Microsoft, T-Mobile US, AWS, Nvidia and Softbank. The group wants to investigate how artificial intelligence can improve the RAN (Radio Access Network, mainly the transmission towers and their surrounding equipment).
The priorities include reducing power consumption, using spectrum more efficiently, and retrofitting new business opportunities and innovations so that they can also be applied to existing infrastructure. The group is looking at 5G and 6G for this.
Compared to 4G, the current 5G standard is much more developed with cloud environments in mind but is not entirely around AI. This is because the standards for 5G and what it entails were already partly established before the current boom around AI started.
The group talks about exploring things together. It also examines whether they can improve data among themselves to make AI systems better.
The creation was announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which runs this week. The new alliance will give demos at the Arm stand (Hall 2) about what it wants to achieve.
