Rakuten To Orchestrate Open RAN Efforts In Kenya And The USA
Rakuten Mobile and its sister company Rakuten Symphony have announced new agreements that will see both companies lend their expertise in deploying Open RAN solutions. The moves highlight an emerging challenge facing new entrants in the Open RAN space from both the vendor and operator communities around the technical expertise required to effectively test, validate and certify new products and solutions in the first instance and to build, operate, and maintain Open RAN networks in the second instance.
The first deal, involving Rakuten Mobile, will see the Japanese operator work with recipients of grants from the US Government’s NTIA. Sixteen companies including Battelle Memorial Institute, Microelectronics Technology, Eridan Communications and Airspan Networks were awarded $420 million to develop Open Radio Units (O-RUs) in the US. Rakuten Mobile will be assisting with the verification and integration processes required for the commercial deployment of these products.
The move is surprising given the fact that the first round of grants from the same fund were aimed at establishing test and integration facilities in the US. Recipients included Boost Mobile, which like Rakuten Mobile, boasts a brand new Open RAN network. It received $50 million to launch its Open RAN Center for Integration & Deployment (ORCID) in July of last year. AT&T and Verizon also received a grant worth $42 million. America’s two largest operators partnered with a number of tech giants to create the ACCoRD project (Acceleration of Compatibility and Commercialization for Open RAN Deployments). Despite these investments, the NTIA has looked abroad for help in bringing these new products to market.
The second deal, involving Rakuten Symphony, sees the Japanese software manufacture partner with American radio vendor Airspan Networks in signing an MoU with state operated Telkom Kenya. The MoU will see the three companies collaborate to undertake knowledge transfer and testing of Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) technology on the African continent.
Telkom Kenya is looking to leverage the MoU to better test the open and flexible network architectures afforded by Open RAN. It views this as an opportunity to enhance its use of automation and AI-powered technologies and to be at the forefront of the development of homegrown technologies. It hopes to achieve this through collaborations with international market leaders and in this case Rakuten Symphony and Airspan will be responsible for overseeing partners within the testing.
As part of the MoU, Rakuten Symphony will supply the centralised unit and distributed unit infrastructure, along with its OSS platform, while Airspan will supply 4G and 5G radio units and the mobile core.
