Rakuten Mobile’s executive team took a victory lap at a press event in Tokyo today, boasting that its skeptics have been proven wrong on the company’s goal to deploy the world’s first fully virtualized, cloud native, open radio access network (RAN).
The subsidiary of the ecommerce juggernaut is running about six months behind schedule on its original plan to deploy a greenfield network, but it claims that early challenges have been overcome. Rakuten Mobile’s 4G LTE network will be commercially available throughout most of Japan on April 8, and the company said it will evolve its network to 5G in June.
Rakuten Mobile is using equipment, software, and services from Intel, Cisco, Nokia, Qualcomm, Altiostar, NEC, Mavenir, and Airspan. The company also announced a 20% equity investment in AST & Science, a global satellite telecommunications startup, which Rakuten intends to use for coverage in less populated areas of Japan.
“We believe telecommunication networks today are well overdue for transformation. In the age of Internet 2.0 and the age of hyperscale architecture, we felt that the current technology in the existing telecommunication networks do not scale and do not meet the demands of the future, especially in the 5G era,” said Rakuten Mobile CTO Tareq Amin.
Rakuten Tackles RAN Complexity
“We started with the radio access network,” Amin said. “The reason was simple: this is where the complexity comes today in deployment of telecommunication networks. Radio architecture, as it exists today, is complex. Have you ever wondered why it takes many many months, if not years, to evolve from one technology generation to the other? That is today for Rakuten not acceptable and that’s why we have pushed this idea of an open RAN platform. We have deployed the world’s first open RAN.”
That open RAN framework is 40% cheaper than traditional telecommunication infrastructure, according to Amin, who said opex will be even better in terms of running and managing the network. He added that “even Nokia” bought into its vision and opened its remote radio head to enable this architecture.
Rakuten Mobile’s network is also cloud native, which means the entire network is “deployed in off-the-shelf commodity servers, no different than what you see in IT infrastructure platforms,” Amin said.
Antennas for the 4G network are being provided by Nokia and Altiostar, which Rakuten owns a majority share in. The operator is also working with NEC to build and manufacture a 5G massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna for Rakuten Mobile’s 5G network that will be deployed in a couple months, according to Amin.
Rakuten Mobile’s network architecture also allows for greater security, Amin said. “Because our network is open there are no black boxes in the mobile network of Rakuten,” he explained. “We have the ability to put strong identity certificates in the network at every interface including radio access. We have validation of security configuration, segmentation of network services, visibility of end-to-end network activities, and limited access thanks to the automation that we have implemented.”
Rakuten Expansion Plans
By the end of this month, Rakuten Mobile will have deployed 4,400 base stations throughout Japan and it estimates to have at least 8,600 base stations installed within the next year.
“The network you have built is absolutely going to change the industry,” said Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins in a pre-recorded video streamed at the event. “What we’re going to see in the months and years ahead is going to challenge how everyone thinks about their networks.” Cisco is providing the cloud platform for Rakuten Mobile’s network.
Ashraf Dahod, CEO at Altiostar, which is providing software for Rakuten Mobile’s automated open virtual RAN, congratulated the company on creating the “world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized, software-defined mobile network,” calling it a bold idea. “There were skeptics that said this could not be done and the technology was too new to scale, but through an unyielding vision of the future, singular focus, and intense effort of the team we are here today for the commercial launch of this network,” Dahod said.
Rakuten Mobile has been operating its network on a trial basis for about four months and is now opening up orders for new customers starting tomorrow. The operator is offering one year of service for free to the first 3 million customers and said its monthly rate will be around $28 for unlimited data, voice, and messaging services.
Now that Rakuten Mobile has successfully designed and built a fully virtualized cloud-native network, it’s eyeing global expansion opportunities, starting in the United States. The company announced it hired Azita Arvani to be GM of Rakuten Mobile in the Americas, and said she will be responsible for building a business in the United States, including development, strategy, and deployment.
It’s unclear how or when Rakuten Mobile might enter the U.S. market as a network operator, but the company said it is already exploring opportunities for expansion outside of Japan.