LIVE FROM MWC25 BARCELONA: SoftBank Corp shifted attention from open RAN to adding AI to a network running base stations which are software-ready to boost performance and spectrum efficiency.

Ryuji Wakikawa, head of the company’s Research Institute of Advanced Technology, told Mobile World Live recent demonstrations using AI RAN showed about a 20 per cent improvement in throughput and spectrum efficiency.

AI RAN is similar to distribute computing and SoftBank began work on it in 2019.

Wakikawa explained a key reason was to spur innovation.

“This is one opportunity operators can capture to drive revenue from AI.”

He added making use of AI is essential, because it is where operators can begin to innovate again.

“The speed of AI innovation so fast, while telecom is very slow”, he noted. “There is a lot of innovation happening between every new generation, but the big updates are only every ten years.”

Open RAN
Wakikawa admitted SoftBank does not have a strong reason to adopt open RAN because the performance is not as competitive as hardware-based systems, which can support more layers.

Because it is software-based, he noted, it cannot handle massive computational requirements. “From the operator’s perspective, what we get is the same: connectivity.”

Turning to the mobile edge, he recalled operators first talking about the technology almost two decades ago, but said nothing really happened due to a lack of use cases and clear business models, with few deployments.

But the executive now believes AI inference brings a strong use case as it requires massive computational power, which can be deployed on the mobile edge.

At MWC25, he expected more attention on 6G, but said most is on AI which is a good move for the industry: “6G is about 2030 and beyond, AI is about tomorrow.”

He acknowledged most consumers did not experience much of an improvement in the move to 5G because all applications are served from the cloud.

“From 4G to 5G we didn’t see much gain and we haven’t yet been able to recoup the 5G investment because ARPU is declining.”

He said it is “kind of insane” to make a massive investment to connect handsets to base stations while the applications are far away.