Physical AI isn’t “just more traffic” I Nokia
Physical AI isn’t “just more traffic” I Nokia
https://www.nokia.com/blog/physical-ai-redefining-ran-and-telco-monetization/
Publish Date: 2026-04-08 04:05:00
Source Domain: www.nokia.com
- Artificial intelligence (AI), driven by large language models, is causing a significant revolution in mobile device applications including scene recognition, document generation, text-chat, voice conversations, and image/video generation.
- AI-driven applications are transforming mobile traffic patterns, primarily leading to higher uplink traffic and overall traffic growth, while emphasizing the sensitivity to latency in voice and chat applications.
- Historically, mobile networks have adapted to new traffic types by increasing capacity without major design overhauls, but the arrival of Physical AI, where AI assists in controlling physical machinery, may require fundamental changes in how traffic is managed in the radio access network (RAN).
- Physical AI applications require both high data volumes and strict latency guarantees, presenting a design and cost challenge for mobile networks. For instance, low latency video for autonomous systems cannot rely on buffering like traditional streaming.
- Supporting low latency Physical AI traffic at scale will necessitate changes at application, network, and service level, including more deliberate traffic handling, differentiated connectivity, and enhanced service level agreements.
- Mobile networks will likely need to adopt more programmatic radio access platforms and better use of QoS and network slicing to accommodate the unique demands of Physical AI while controlling costs.
- The shift towards supporting Physical AI traffic could lead to the adoption of new applications in mobile compute offloading and federated learning, further pushing the boundaries of how mobile networks are designed and operated.
