Altiostar congratulated its partner Rakuten Mobile for winning two 2021 Global Mobile (GLOMO) awards, known as the Oscars of the mobile industry, for its 5G Open RAN on Kubernetes solution at the GSMA Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona last week.
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Rakuten Mobile won the award for Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough based on its 5G Open RAN on Kubernetes. The network won another honor when a panel of more than 20 CTOs from around the world selected Rakuten Mobile for the CTO Choice: Outstanding Mobile Technology Award.
Altiostar has worked closely with Rakuten Mobile to deploy this network from the start. Rakuten Mobile launched full-scale commercial service on its 4G Open RAN network in April 2020 and aims to achieve 96% population coverage by the end of 2021. Altiostar developed the cloud-native, Kubernetes-based Open vRAN software that Rakuten Mobile used to build the network. The network is an industry-first for using cloud native software that converts Open vRAN network elements, including distributed units (DUs) and centralized units (CUs), into containerized applications that are fast to deploy, can be individually upgraded and offer better network scalability.
The resulting 5G network has dramatically improved economics, deployability and scalability, with the operator detailing up to 40% reduction in capital expenditure (CAPEX) and up to 30% decrease in operating expenditure (OPEX) compared to a traditional network deployment.
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“This company, with ecosystem partners, has successfully deployed a fully open, cloud-native and cost-effective mobile network, a great benchmark for the operators globally to adopt and join the open network bandwagon,” commented the GLOMO judges on the entry.
In addition to these benefits, the Rakuten Mobile network is demonstrating industry leading performance especially in dense urban networks. In a recent report by independent analyst firm umlaut, the Rakuten Mobile 4G network in Tokyo delivered the best throughput speed compared to networks in 13 other cities across the globe.
“Winning these prestigious awards for such an innovative architecture is an important validation of Open RAN and a milestone for the industry,” said Ashraf Dahod, President and CEO of Altiostar. “I extend heartfelt congratulations to the entire Rakuten Mobile team. We are honored to partner with them, and this is great recognition for a team that had the vision for a new mobile network design in Japan and the boldness to pursue that vision.”
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