Etisalat Group and Rakuten Mobile on Monday inked an agreement to develop a reference blueprint for mobile broadband networks and Open RAN technology based on the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP).
Under this agreement, the companies aim to jointly develop a reference design for a new generation of mobile networks for Etisalat customers across the Middle East, Africa and Asia regions based on open standards and a cloud-native, software centric and fully virtualized/containerized platform with intelligent and secure operations.
Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, Etisalat was established over four decades ago in the UAE as the country’s first telecommunications service provider. An international blue-chip organisation, Etisalat Group provides innovative solutions and services to 149 million subscribers in 16 countries across the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Etisalat is the fastest mobile network globally by Ookla Speedtest in 2020 providing its subscribers the most superior experience.
Tareq Amin, Representative Director, EVO and CTO of Rakuten Mobile
We’re excited to work with Etisalat to build a new generation of telecom infrastructure based on the Rakuten Communications Platform which will bring cost effective mobile services to their customers across the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.
Hatem Bamatraf, CTO, Etisalat International
This is a unique opportunity for Etisalat and Rakuten Mobile to 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.
