Rakuten’s New 5G Architecture.

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When Rakuten Mobile exploded onto the telecom industry scene in Japan, they made it very clear to the public that this was a company planning on doing things differently. They were planning to keep reliance on traditional RAN hardware to the minimum which would lead to a far cheaper rollout. The main aim of the company is to enable a complete transformation in the telecom infrastructure buildout, not only for Japan, but the entire world. In April 2020, Rakuten Mobile launched their end-to-end fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network with a later announcement of the availability of their commercial 5G service in certain areas across six prefectures of the country.

 

The service, initially offered via Non-Stand Alone (NSA) 5G architecture, is already available in parts of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Hokkaido, Osaka and Hyogo. Rakuten is hugely popular for offering cheap contracts to their citizens, and is become one of the lead investors in the venue launched by AST & Science which is developing revolutionary space mobile technology. This basically means that every corner of the planet will have 100 percent coverage using space networks so any phone located anywhere in the world will have the possibility to connect, regardless of where it is. These rural networks and rural locations will have the same service that you get in capital citites or metropolitan areas.

Rakuten are innovating and bringing this to the market at a accelerated pace, they have introduced to the world just one single carrier plan which offers unlimted data within Rakuten network areas and unlimited domestic calls with the use of “Rakuten Link” which is the communication app developed by them. And for the first year, their “UN-LIMIT” plan which they like to call it will be free for three million subscribers, and from the second year onwards the company will start charging them 2,980 YEN per month excluding taxes. As new spectrum frequencies are assigned and more bandwidth becomes available, Nippon Electric Company (NEC) and Rakuten Mobile plan to upgrade and expand the 5G radio units. “The base technology will be similar, but there will be more things to work on in terms of performance, which is largely governed by the hardware” says Rakuten’s senior vice president Nozomu Watanabe.

 

With 5G, the focus is to not only improve convenience for their users, but also to utilize the technology in a variety of fields and create new business opportunities to solve social issues and support regional development. As for Rakuten’s rivals, and the global telecom market in general, it is the operator’s approach to its network and operations that will be of prime interest, such economies enable Rakuten to price its services lower than its rivals, while also claiming to benefit from a more adaptable, automated, agile, flexible network that can be more quickly and easily managed.

As the company moves forward to expand 4G and 5G coverage, it aims to reduce the household cost of mobile services, which in return encourages customer spending across various other goods and services, contributing to the sustainable growth of Japan’s economy. Rakuten cannot take all the credit for this resurgence, but its high-profile plans have certainly drawn attention to what Japan has to offer. As the e-commerce firm plots a bigger networks role globally, Japan’s tech firms are likely to be willing accomplices.

On the other hand, I’m worried about the negative aspects of 5G as it is more likely that carriers will target bigger cities with larger populations and then slowly expand to outer areas, so in this case people living in a rural setting will not necessarily benefit from the connection. Another downside would be complaints by users that their phones become increasingly hot when using 5G, it was later proven that 5G has a significant impact on the battery drain of a phone. Also, physical obstructions such as buildings, walls, trees or towers will either absorb, block or disrupt high frequency signals, and well the telecom industry is really working hard to fix this problem by increasing existing cell towers to extend broadcast distance. So, these are definitely things to consider before switching to a 5G connection.

Sources:

https://www.ft.com/content/f1513214-6e71-4f89-af43-4c4a7275a93e

https://www.telecomtv.com/content/5g/tada-rakuten-launches-free-5g-using-open-ran-39793/

https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/rakuten-s-5g-network-will-be-built-containers

Yes, Rakuten will converge its 4G and 5G cores

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