- What happened in the IT world is happening in the telecom world right now, but mostly in a private cloud model.
- Rakuten is holding talks with telcos and governments in a bid to take its innovative platform to rest of the world.
Dubai: The telecom industry will look totally different in the next five to seven years with the advent of virtualised and open networks, Rakuten Mobile’s global head of sales said.
Rakuten Mobile, the mobile network subsidiary of Rakuten Group, is the youngest and fourth mobile operator in Japan, with others being NTT Docomo, SoftBank and KDDI.
Rabih Dabboussi, Senior Vice-President for Global Sales and Marketing at Rakuten Mobile, speaking in an exclusive to TechChannel News said that their network is unique and they are the only operator in the world that is 100% cloud-native and fully virtualised, which means that they don’t use any proprietary or legacy infrastructure.
“It is all futureproof and modern network infrastructure based on virtualised functions. The outcome of that is the huge reduction in cost (Capex and Opex) and lot more flexibility and agility in deploying 5G networks, incremental revenue streams and the ability to provide highly secure and “clean” network,” he said.
“If we succeed in our mission, in five to seven years from now, the telecom industry is going to look significantly different and those who adopt these new virtualised, containerised and open network infrastructures will thrive.”
Dabboussi spent over two decades at Cisco helping mobile operators around the world deploy 2.5G, 3G and 4G networks. He was also the Managing Director and General Manager for Cisco UAE and helped establish UAE startup businesses in the secure communications and cybersecurity space.
He joined Rakuten in May this year.
No more monopoly
“We have many options in the IT world offered from the cloud such as software-defined networking other IT systems. This trend is taking place in the telco world right now, but mostly in a private cloud model. In the past, some IT system vendors had a monopoly on the market, we see many more options available from startups from around the world offering IT solutions in the cloud,” Dabboussi said.
Taking full advantage of cloud and virtualisation techniques did not happen before in the telecom world, he said due to its complexity and the technologies being quite different and there will always be someone who needs to take the risk first and “we did that. This trend is going to accelerate in the years to come.”
Rakuten has launched full-scale commercial services on its fully virtualised 4G LTE network in Japan in April and Dabboussi said that 5G will be launched in October, with the convergence of 4G/5G core in 2021.
“We are holding talks with many telcos around the world. My aim is to take the platform that we built in Japan and offer it to the telcos and governments outside of Japan. I am building a global go-to-market team now to take our innovative platform to the rest of the world,” Dabboussi said.
Rakuten Mobile has established its international headquarters in Singapore and has plans to expand to the Americas soon.
“I am going to take it step by step and select the right operator with the right vision for our first few deployments,” Dabboussi said.
“We have also been recognised by the US Department of State as a ‘Clean Carrier’ as we only use trusted technologies in our platform from radio access networks through our datacentres and core. There are a lot of discussions around the trust of certain equipment vendors and the cost associated with rolling out 5G networks,” he said.
This seems to be an opportune time for Rakuten to accelerate the adoption of its platform as telcos around the world consider “clean” network vendors.
Certified clean telcos
The Clean Network program describes itself as the Trump Administration’s comprehensive approach to safeguarding the nation’s assets including citizens’ privacy and companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors.
Under the Clean Network program are the Clean Carrier, Clean Store, Clean Apps, Clean Cloud, Clean Cable and Clean Path.
Some of the largest telecom companies around the globe are also becoming “Clean Telcos.”
The US Department of State on its website has listed Orange in France, Jio in India, Telstra in Australia, SK and KT in South Korea, NTT, SoftBank, Rakuten and KDDI in Japan, and O2 in the United Kingdom are refusing to do business with certain telecom vendors.
There are speculations in the market that the Trump administration may ditch Ericsson and Nokia and may join hands with Japan to find a 5G alternative to the Chinese major.