Telefonica and Rakuten to combine efforts on Open RAN and network automation
By Keith Dyer 16 September 2020
Odd couple Telefonica and Rakuten both want to get on with it, is about the message.
Today Telefonica and Rakuten said they would be co-operating to jointly develop products for Open RAN and for cloud-native, automated core and OSS solutions. They also said they would enter into a joint procurement initiative for Open RAN and cloud-native network solutions.
It’s an odd couple buddy movie – the giant incumbent and the plucky upstart. Cast Telefonica as the experienced old pro learning new tricks from its fresh-faced young partner, and Rakuten as the upstart new-comer finding respect for the old stager that, it turns out, has a few tricks of its own.
Telefonica gets to deepen its understanding of how the virtual RAN platform works, and to develop a reference platform that integrators can go and make happen in the network. Rakuten gets scale investment in the products, and help with procurement (ie access to even cheaper product via the scale that Telefonica brings). And although it already has experience in instrumenting its network to become automated, it also gets the benefit of Telefonica’s huge amount of work in virtualising its network, and in developing AI-led solutions for cloud-based network functionality.
As Rakuten CTO Tareq Amin said, “The opportunity for making software better is enormous. We have unparalleled access to the engineering resources to build resilience and a software architecture for how to automate networks as a whole.”
the-mobile-network.com/2020/09/...ran-and-network-automation/
By Keith Dyer 16 September 2020
Odd couple Telefonica and Rakuten both want to get on with it, is about the message.
Today Telefonica and Rakuten said they would be co-operating to jointly develop products for Open RAN and for cloud-native, automated core and OSS solutions. They also said they would enter into a joint procurement initiative for Open RAN and cloud-native network solutions.
It’s an odd couple buddy movie – the giant incumbent and the plucky upstart. Cast Telefonica as the experienced old pro learning new tricks from its fresh-faced young partner, and Rakuten as the upstart new-comer finding respect for the old stager that, it turns out, has a few tricks of its own.
Telefonica gets to deepen its understanding of how the virtual RAN platform works, and to develop a reference platform that integrators can go and make happen in the network. Rakuten gets scale investment in the products, and help with procurement (ie access to even cheaper product via the scale that Telefonica brings). And although it already has experience in instrumenting its network to become automated, it also gets the benefit of Telefonica’s huge amount of work in virtualising its network, and in developing AI-led solutions for cloud-based network functionality.
As Rakuten CTO Tareq Amin said, “The opportunity for making software better is enormous. We have unparalleled access to the engineering resources to build resilience and a software architecture for how to automate networks as a whole.”
the-mobile-network.com/2020/09/...ran-and-network-automation/