Japan's newest mobile operator, Rakuten announced a strategic investment in US-based mobile technology company, Altiostar Network.
Altiostar will utilize this new round of financing to expand its virtual Radio Access Network solutions for 4G and 5G to accelerate the industry paradigm shift to web-scale cloud-native mobile networks.
Rakuten is currently on track to achieve an industry first with the deployment of a fully virtualized mobile network in Japan in October 2019, including radio access, and the investment in Altiostar demonstrates Rakuten’s commitment to taking a leadership role in driving RAN virtualization. To build its 5G-ready mobile network infrastructure, Rakuten is nurturing an open ecosystem by actively participating in crafting solutions through engagement with industry leaders like Intel and Qualcomm, as well as ODMs and innovative Virtual RAN disruptors like Altiostar.
In addition to the investment, Rakuten Mobile Network President Yoshihisa Yamada and Chief Technology Officer Tareq Amin will join the board of Altiostar upon completion of the transaction.
Tareq Amin, CTO, Rakuten Mobile Network
Our vision for Rakuten Mobile Network is to build the world’s first end-to-end, fully virtualized, software-defined mobile network: A network that innovates at the Speed-of-Software and scales at the Speed-of-Cloud.
Ashraf Dahod, CEO, Altiostar Networks
Open RAN architecture and virtualization are key to building software-centric networks that can scale and adapt to meet an explosion of devices and applications driving service velocity and profits. This funding is going to help us expand our technology innovation to help operators like Rakuten to push new business models and bring affordable broadband to the masses through web-scale mobile networks.