VodafoneThree Begins Commercial Deployment of Ericsson AI-Ready Massive MIMO Radio in London

VodafoneThree has begun deploying Ericsson's AIR 3266, an AI-ready Massive MIMO radio with an on-chip neural accelerator, in its commercial network in London. Both companies describe this as the first commercial deployment of the radio. The work forms part of a program worth more than £11 billion to upgrade over 10,000 sites to 5G standalone.

Ericsson states that the AIR 3266 is a mid-band TDD radio supporting up to 400 MHz of spectrum and weighing 16 kilograms. The vendor claims that the on-chip neural accelerator increases AI inference capability tenfold, and reports energy savings of at least 30 percent and a 50 percent reduction in embodied carbon. These performance figures are vendor-reported and have not been independently verified.

According to the companies, a trial of an AI-based scheduler in the radio is planned for the end of March 2027. The London deployment marks the start of a wider rollout across VodafoneThree's network under the upgrade program.