Introduction to Rakuten Symphony – A multibillion-dollar Japanese Telecom gear maker
Indian home-grown solutions for the world
Japan’s Rakuten Group company – Rakuten Symphony (RS), a global telecom player strategically leverages India as the GLOBAL HUB for Telecom innovation and engineering. India contributes significantly in the realms of OpenRAN, cloud computing, and 6G development for RS. To bolster its efforts, the conglomerate plans to augment its engineering workforce with the establishment of the Global Innovation Lab (GLI) and new engineering development facilities in Bengaluru.
The Bengaluru-based GLI will be core to Rakuten’s R&D efforts leading to industrialized automation of Open RAN-based, cloud-native mobile networks. The facilities will support the Indian government’s mission to develop home-grown telco solutions built in India for the world.
Collaboration with local telecom operators and IITs for 6G research
The telecom subsidiary RS seeks collaborations with Indian telecom operators to facilitate OpenRAN 5G and small-cell deployments. RS has started working with Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) on 6G technology. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi released India’s 6G Vision “Bharat 6G Vision” document last year, which envisages India to be a frontline contributor in developing and deploying 6G technology by 2030. India aims for 10 percent of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in the 6G domain. RS fully supports this vision of Mr. Modi and is working towards bringing it into reality.
India is the HUB for Global Innovation
Rakuten Symphony is a hub for the group’s telecom and networking technologies. It stores critical Intellectual Properties (IPs) which are crucial for the company. Sharad Srivastava, co-chief Executive Officer of Rakuten Mobile and President of RS, recently emphasized the significance of India in the company’s strategic roadmap. He highlighted the country’s pivotal role during his inaugural media engagement since assuming the position in August 2023.
Sriwastawa remarked, “India is poised to emerge as our paramount global innovation and engineering center, particularly for Rakuten Symphony.” He underscored the strategic acquisitions made by the group, such as Altiostar and Robin.io, which already boasted R&D centers in India. Furthermore, the establishment of a robust lab in the country, now utilized across all business units, signifies their commitment to nurturing a dynamic ecosystem conducive to innovation.
Ratuken Symphony has branches in three locations in India
With approximately 4,000 employees worldwide, Rakuten Symphony predominantly operates from its offices in Bangalore, Indore, and Pune, with other key centers strategically positioned in Germany to support 1&1 mobile network deployment, in Japan to streamline operations within Rakuten Mobile, and in the United States to maintain a foothold in crucial markets.
Private 5G network
Rakuten Symphony is also doubling down on the private 5G opportunity. It has partnered with Tech Mahindra, Infosys, and Cognizant to use its sales force to sell its solutions to enterprises. Though the Indian private 5G market is yet to take off, Rakuten is ready with the solutions whenever it opens up.
Since the private 5G opportunity is some time away for Rakuten Symphony, it immediately wants to tap the cloud market in India with the help of its acquisition of Robin.io. It competes with the likes of VMware in the cloud space.
Tapping the private cloud opportunity
Rakuten is working with many partners in the cloud, as some companies are not going to the public cloud due to various reasons – performance and security issues. However, they are big enough to have their private cloud owned and operated by them. Globally, the private cloud has gained good traction, and RS is trying to get almost all the big tier-one operators to embrace RS private cloud.
Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN)
Open RAN stands for Open Radio Access Network. It’s a non-proprietary version of the Radio Access Network (RAN) system. Open RAN is a new approach to building mobile networks that connect devices to the internet and other users. It includes open interoperable interfaces, virtualization, big data, and AI-enabled features. Visit this Site to learn more about Open RAN.
To learn more about Rakuten’s current plans, visit their Website.
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