Rakuten Symphony announced the expansion of its operations across the U.K., France and Germany.
The Japanese company noted that this expansion will allow the firm to support the business operations and growth in the European market and collaboration with operators and vendors in the region to support the transformation of mobile network operations and adoption of Open RAN technologies.
“Europe is a mature market for mobile network infrastructure and yet mobile network operators and governments are incredibly open to the opportunities Open RAN technologies can bring to the region,” said Tareq Amin, CEO of Rakuten Symphony. “We’re expanding our operations across Europe to strengthen our research and development capabilities and our commitment to the region. We will collaborate closely with European operators, vendors, governments and academic institutions to contribute to developing the region’s Open RAN technologies, while working to realize our vision of providing a future-proof, cost-effective, cloud-based connectivity platform to transform the delivery of telecommunications services by mobile network operators.”
In the U.K., Rakuten Symphony will be based in London and is focused on 4G and 5G Open RAN software and hardware development and testing for Rakuten Symphony, leveraging and expanding recently acquired Altiostar Networks’ R&D center and Open RAN engineering lab in the country.
In France, Rakuten Symphony will be based in Paris, while in Germany, the firm’s headquarters will be based in Dusseldorf. In August 2021, German operator 1&1 AG and Rakuten Group announced a long-term partnership to build the former’s mobile network, which will become the fourth mobile network in Germany.
Together with Rakuten, 1&1 will build what it claims to be Europe’s first fully virtualized mobile network based on Open RAN technology, which will feature a 100% cloud-based multi-vendor network architecture.
Rakuten Symphony has headquarters in Japan and local presence in the United States, Singapore, India, Europe and the Middle East Africa region.
In a separate statement, Rakuten Mobile revealed its operating loss increased 54.9% year-on-year during Q4 2021 to JPY118.7 billion ($1 billion) while its revenue reached JPY65.3 billion in the quarter, up 47.8% year-on-year.
Rakuten’s mobile segment recorded revenue of JPY227.5 billion in fiscal year 2021, an increase of 31.9% year-on-year. “Revenue from users completing the one-year free campaign is steadily adding more to revenue, and sales from devices are increasing. Revenue recorded from telco platform business Rakuten Symphony also contributed to this result,” the company said.
The total number of subscriptions for the MNO service and MVNO service surpassed 5.5 million as of February 2022.
In February 2022, Rakuten Mobile said it had reached 96% population coverage ratio for its 4G network area four years ahead of schedule of the plan originally submitted to the Japanese government.
