Nvidia Corp. early Sunday announced ahead of the MWC Barcelona conference that its joining global telecom leaders in a commitment to build 6G on open and secure artificial intelligence-native platforms, bringing software-defined networking to the future of telecommunications.

As it rolled out, 5G helped offer enough bandwith and opportunity to blaze a trail for the much-anticipated “metaverse,” but that hype has been quickly supplanted by another darling: artificial intelligence. The promise of AI — and thinking machines acting autonomously across networks — have greatly increased potential demands for switching and traffic.

The current evolution, 5G Advanced, will turn early 5G deployments into something more capable and programmable and, frankly, more useful at scale. It represents a bridge that operators can tune using software-defined networking, allowing AI- and machine learning-assisted radio and operations to achieve better energy efficiency and improved coverage capacity, while supporting new devices.

The expectation is that this will eventually grow into 6G, which is expected to launch commercially around 2030, with initial trials starting as early as 2028.

Aside from transforming traditional connectivity, 6G wireless networks will accelerate advancements in physical AI, allowing millions of autonomous machines, sensors, vehicles and robots to interact with the real world.

“AI is redefining computing and driving the largest infrastructure buildout in human history — and telecommunications is next,” said Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive of Nvidia. “Together with a global coalition of industry leaders, Nvidia is building AI-RAN to transform the world’s telecom networks into AI infrastructure everywhere.”

AI-RAN, or artificial intelligence radio access networking, represents the next evolution of telecommunications architecture: incorporating AI-driven networking that can continuously evolve through software, enabling real-time intelligence and faster advancement.

Nvidia joined with leading operators and infrastructure providers including Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., BT Group plc, Cisco Systems Inc., Deutsche Telekom AG, Nokia Corp. and T-Mobile US Inc. to build open and trusted wireless platforms.

“As 6G becomes the backbone of the AI era, telecom will serve as the nervous system of the digital economy, enabling autonomous systems and intelligent industries at scale and unlocking new value for customers and businesses alike,” said Srini Gopalan, chief executive of T-Mobile.

Commercializing AI-RAN

To support this onrushing technological wake, Nvidia announced new AI-RAN collaborations with industry pioneers including T-Mobile US, SoftBank and Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison.

These partnerships bring AI-RAN out of the lab and into the field, providing platforms for commercialization of products. This includes a growing ecosystem around Nvidia-powered solutions such as Quanta Cloud Technology off-the-shelf systems; WNC Corp.’s AI-optimized indoor-outdoor radio unit; Eridan Communications Inc.’s 4T4R O-RU; and Lite-On Technology Corp.’s completed integration for sub-6 GHz units and millimeter wave.

This would allow companies to deploy wireless networking for high-capacity, short-range coverage and dense infrastructure in urban environments, as needed, depending on deployment requirements.

Advancing AI network software for telcos

Autonomous networks — intelligent, self-managing telecommunications operations — would mean telecoms operating themselves like thinking machines. That will require large language models and reasoning systems that can automate networks from within.

Nvidia argues that for networks to become autonomous, agentic AI will need to run using specialized telecom network models that can talk to each other across networks and use simulation tools to validate actions.

In its announcement, the company unveiled a Nemotron-based large telco model, or LTM, along with a guide for building agents for network operations and an operations blueprint. These Nvidia Blueprints include energy savings, network configuration with multi-agent orchestration and advanced autonomy.

The company said its Nemotron framework is open and gives telcos transparency into how it was trained and what data was used. That, Nvidia argues, enables secure and fast on-premises deployment within networks.

Nvidia and Tech Mahindra Ltd. published an open-source guide showing operators how to fine-tune domain-specific reasoning models and build agents for network operations center workflows.

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