Rakuten Mobile and NEC today announced that production of the 5G radio unit (RU) jointly developed by the two companies has started at NEC Platforms' Fukushima Plant, and the first unit has been shipped.
The new domestically produced, high quality 5G RU is equipped with a 3.7 GHz frequency band massive MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) antenna in a compact, lightweight form factor with low power consumption. With the 5G RU, Rakuten Mobile will begin the buildout of its 5G network, starting with the construction of base stations in the Tokyo area, and work toward the launch of 5G commercial services in June 2020.
Rakuten Mobile is building the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized cloud native network, and in October 2019 in Japan successfully implemented the world’s first open, virtualized, distributed radio access network (OpenRAN). In addition, Rakuten Mobile and NEC are also closely collaborating on BSS (Business Support System) and OSS (Operation Support System) solutions for Rakuten Mobile’s 4G network operations.
Tareq Amin, Representative Director, EVP and CTO, Rakuten Mobile
NEC’s 5G RU, developed and produced in Japan, will play a very important role in Rakuten Mobile’s fully virtualized cloud native mobile network.
Atsuo Kawamura, EVP and President of the Network Services Business Unit, NEC
The 5G RU, produced at our Fukushima Plant, conforms with open architecture standards, and comes in a compact form factor with low power consumption.
