Japanese e-commerce giant, Rakuten recently announced that it has decided to utilize the transmission towers, utility poles, telecommunication towers and other infrastructure of The Kansai Electric Power in establishing a network of base stations for its mobile business.
Last week, Rakuten received the green light from the government to become the nation’s fourth major wireless carrier alongside with NTT Docomo, KDDI and SoftBank.
Rakuten is set to launch cellular service starting in 2019 after the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry advisory board approved its application for a 4G mobile license. Rakuten applied to the goverment for frequency band allocation for the 4G in the 1.7 GHz band and 3.4 GHz band.
Use of transmission towers, utility poles, telecommunication towers and other equipment would allow for efficient infrastructure investment, said Rakuten.
Rakuten is looking to invest in base station infrastructure in the most efficient way possible and will consider collaborations with other electric utilities in order to achieve Japan-wide service coverage.
