Rakuten Mobile, a subsidiary of the e-commerce juggernaut that plans to deploy a fully virtualized, software-defined mobile network in Japan later this year, today announced a partnership with NEC Corp. to jointly develop open vRAN (virtual radio access network) equipment for 5G services. Rakuten says it is building a greenfield network that will initially deliver 4G LTE services and evolve to 5G in June 2020.
The companies plan to jointly develop a 3.7 GHz massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) 5G radio that will be manufactured by NEC in Japan. NEC has other deals with Japanese mobile operators for 5G base stations, including NTT DoCoMo.
“I think this is a big move, however, I do think that in Japan companies are much more likely to go for local vendors than they are foreign vendors,” Anshel Sag, analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, wrote in response to questions. “NEC probably saw this opportunity to grow their business with a new operator with ambition for growth and potentially expand outward as well.”
Earlier this year, Rakuten was allocated spectrum and approval from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications to deploy what it describes as an end-to-end cloud-native mobile 5G network. Rakuten has already partnered with a long list of vendors for the effort including Allot, Altiostar, Ciena, Cisco, Fujitsu, Innoeye, Intel, Mavenir, Nokia, OKI, Qualcomm, Quanta Cloud Technology, Red Hat, Sercomm, Tech Mahindra, and Viavi.
The partnership with NEC will lead to the “world’s first 5G open RAN architecture here in Japan,” said Tareq Amin, CTO of Rakuten Mobile, in a prepared statement. “NEC’s technology and expertise will allow us to not only cost-effectively create a highly secure, high quality 5G network, but by designing and producing the antennas in the local market, we look forward to contributing to the development of the Japanese telecommunications industry and economy.”
Rakuten wants to completely disaggregate hardware from software in its mobile network, and radio access equipment plays a starring role in that vision. While NEC’s contributions to Japan’s 5G networks may not necessarily lead to more opportunities for network operators to seek out new RAN vendors outside of Japan, strong competition in the space is a positive for the industry overall, Sag explained.
“It is incredibly difficult to compete in [the RAN market],” he added. “We’ve seen how much consolidation has already happened and with three companies dominating the market, it is absolutely ripe for disruption.”
Rakuten Mobile is an anomaly in the wireless industry. By creating a greenfield network that will be fully virtualized by software with mobile edge computing architecture, it hopes to effectively render legacy network equipment obsolete and unnecessary.