Etisalat signs memorandum of understanding to use Rakuten Communications Platform for cloud-native, Open RAN networks
Last week Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP) tapped Airspan as a 4G and 5G hardware/software vendor, and this week RCP announced it’s working with Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat to develop a “reference design” for cloud-native, Open RAN networks.
Etisalat Group provides network services to almost 150 million people in 16 countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Azita Arvani, general manager of Rakuten Mobile Americas, participated in RCR Wireless News’ recent 5G Transformation Forum; she characterized RCP as having three general layers.
“In the journey we’ve had in our cloud-native Open RAN architecture, a lot of operators have asked us, ‘We want to do [a] similar thing to what you do. Can you help us?’ We have created this platform that’s really based on all the experiences we’ve had in the last two, two-and-a-half years.”
She continued: “The bottom layer is the unified telco layer and it’s based on the most advanced cloud technology, based on Kubernetes, and hardened for telco-grade requirements. That goes across the different layers of cloud that you might have in your network. On top of that sits our network function layer and that’s where you take advantage of your open architecture…You bring in this multi-vendor aspect, you bring in the best-in-breed for various network functions you want, whether it be for virtual baseband or virtual core, virtual RCS, etc…And we onboard these in a way that makes it part of a holistic system rather than just stitching together a bunch of point solutions. And on top of that is an overarching what we call intelligent and secure operations and that is where we take advantage of the automation. That continuously improves. These three layers together is what RCP is made up of. Depending on the operator we talk to, you can take the entire RCP or pieces of it.”
According to a press statement regarding the RCP/Etisalat arrangement, the goal is to put together a network reference design using “open standards and a cloud-native, software centric and fully virtualized/containerized platform with intelligent and secure operations.”
Etisalat International CTO Hatem Bamatraf said with Rakuten Mobile we will “co-explore and further develop next generation mobile networks based on RCP that will allow Etisalat to leverage a cost-effective, cloud-native, Open RAN-based mobile network architecture that is secure, scalable and reliable.”
In this panel discussion from 5G Transformation Forum, Arvani discusses Rakuten Mobile’s operation in Japan and also discussed RCP. She’s joined by Orange SVP of Seamless Wireless Access Arnaud Vamparys who shares detail of the operator’s ambitions around Open RAN.
