Rakuten Communications Platform update

In conjunction with its recent Rakuten earnings call this week, Rakuten Mobile disclosed some more of its plans.  This mobile operator is becoming a telecom vendor.  Specifically, it said that “by expanding the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP) globally, Rakuten aims to evolve from a Japan-headquartered tech company to a global leader in telecom.”  We see this as an explicit statement that the company plans to sell its telecom software and related services to operators worldwide.  For instance, Rakuten Mobile just announced a partnership with Saudi-based operator, stc.  This move pits Rakuten against Microsoft (who just acquired telecom companies and runs a cloud), Oracle (who runs a cloud and made telecom company acquisitions), and the rest of the telecom industry (traditionally Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, ZTE, Amdocs, Netcracker and others). 

In offering RCP to other operators around the world, its unique value, as we see it, is that Rakuten has successfully built an LTE and now a 5G network based on Open RAN.  What we find interesting is that the company has developed a significant amount of intellectual property in-house or through technology sharing.  In an interview today with Tareq Amin, Rakuten Mobile executive, we asked what technology has been developed in-house by Rakuten.  Here’s what we learned.

• OSS (it acquired OSS vendor, Innoeye May 2020, which has sold to 20 other operators)
• BSS (developing in-house; expected completion by April 2021)
• Orchestration
• Radio software (it owns a substantial share of Altiostar)
• Cloud IP.  It cooperates with robin.io and has added significant services mesh, CPU-related optimizations, for instance
• Systems integration to make its “pods”
• Core.  It works with NEC on 5G Core and has access to its source code

Some other components are not developed by Rakuten (the radios come to mind), but this is an exciting development.  RCP would be delivered as a “private cloud” on the premises of carrier customers (partners).  The terminology Rakuten is using for this “private cloud,” is it’s a “pod.”  RCP’s plans are a very interesting development in the industry.

There is one more thing.  Rakuten said it is working with a technology supplier that will sell Rakuten a server card that would allow a combined router and RAN processing function to co-exist on a server.  Today, the servers it uses to support its Open RAN radios use an FPGA NIC.  These servers can support up to 16 base stations.  We see the addition of routing to this card as an extension of the capability – but it means there may be a diminished need for cell site routers.