Nokia stock jumps 6% as AI-RAN trials expand to eight operators

Nokia’s bet on AI-powered radio networks is starting to pay off, at least in the eyes of the market. Shares of the Finnish telecom equipment maker climbed roughly 6% in early trading on September 16 to a range of $10.39 to $10.43, after the company announced that eight major operators worldwide have moved into lab and live field trials of its AI-RAN platform. The trial roster reads like a telecom United Nations: A1 Group, Chunghwa Telecom, du, e&, Mobily, stc, TPG Telecom, and Zain Saudi are all now actively testing Nokia’s anyRAN software integrated with NVIDIA’s Aerial RAN Computer. NTT DOCOMO, which had been involved earlier, is also advancing its own trial work. What AI-RAN actually does Nokia’s AI-RAN approach uses software and GPU-accelerated computing to squeeze more performance out of existing infrastructure. The company says its platform has already demonstrated over 20% improvements in spectral efficiency, which is the technical way of saying it can push more data through the same radio frequencies. Nokia is targeting 50% efficiency gains by 2027 and more than 100% by 2028. If those numbers hold, operators could effectively double their network capacity without deploy...