CTO calls it a first-of-its-kind “Wi-Fi like” deployment; espouses benefits of open RAN
BARCELONA–In the two years since being allocated mobile spectrum by Japanese regulators, Rakuten Mobile has built out a fully-virtualized, disaggregated network that’s set to launch in April. But that’s just the beginning, according to Rakuten CEO Mickey Mikitani.
“Initially my thought was just to build the network in a conventional way,” Mikitani said during a Qualcomm event hosted at their headquarters in California. “I was thinking about buying equipment from Huawei and just build [a] very simple network and very simple business model and out price my competitors. But a new idea came up with a new CTO.”
Mikitani is referencing Tareq Amin, CTO of Rakuten Mobile. Amin is a legend in the telecom world having overseen the nationwide build of Reliance Jio’s network in India and now taking on a similar task with Rakuten Mobile in Japan. He has managed the build of 4,000 5G-ready cell sites, multi-access edge computing data centers and the core network.
“Now we are ready to launch our service,” Mikitani said, which includes voice and video messaging, cloud service, file transfer, AI, gaming, SMS, desktop features and group call and chat. “We will be able to deploy our service in Japan. But this not only for Japan. It was a huge investment. We intend to export what we have built. Rakuten Mobile is not just about Japanese mobile network operator service. We want to become, together with Qualcomm and others, a global MNO platform.”
Following Mikitani’s presentation, Amin took the stage. He said that, despite Rakuten being a greenfield network build, it was still an intentional choice to take a new approach rather a more conventional legacy-type build. “Telco networks of today are very complex no matter what the Gs are. It has no software-centricity; it’s all about hardware migration as you go from one generation to the other.” He said their approach was fully-focused on simplification of the network.
“If you look at our architecture, our architecture today is truly the world’s first open RAN deployment today across any telco. It is running at scale. It is absolutely real; it is not pie in the sky.” He said the network demonstrates the ability to lower capex by 40% and opex by 30%.
Rakuten is working with a wide variety of vendors, including Altiostar, Nokia, Qualcomm and Airspan. To learn more about Airspan’s view open RAN and work with Rakuten, check out the below video.
