Rakuten Mobile, which became Japan’s fourth mobile operator in April with a fully virtualised network [1], delayed its launch of 5G service scheduled for June by about three months, citing the impact of Covid-19 (coronavirus).
In a statement, the operator said it will continue to place the highest priority on the safety of employees and partner staff, and monitor the impact of the pandemic, while preparing for launch of 5G service. The company added there are no plans to change its 5G base station deployment plans for the current fiscal year submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
Deployments of 4,738 total base stations to date exceed the 4,400 targeted at launch (these base stations are able to handle both 4G and 5G traffic). The company has contracts in place to install 10,000 sites soon, and plans to reach 70 per cent population coverage by March 2021.
Rakuten Mobile CTO Tareq Amin said in an earnings call 13 May that the hardware buildout was not delayed by lockdown measures, but noted some validation tests had been hindered by limited laboratory access. He reiterated this point in a tweet today to journalist Keith Dyer:
Hardware is not the issue SW development have been hindered by our lack of our ability to access labs in japan and India making good progress to recover though
— Tareq Amin (@tamin007) May 15, 2020 [2]
Its 5G radio unit hardware suppliers are Airspan and NEC. The software element of the new ‘open RAN’ network is provided by Altiostar.
The country’s three incumbent operators Docomo, KDDI and SoftBank all introduced 5G services [3] in late March, so today’s delay will see the newcomer trail rivals by six months.
The delay comes just two days after chairman and CEO Mickey Mikitani (pictured) said that with retail outlets closed in the country it is facing a shortfall [4] in daily 4G additions and acknowledged there is room for improvement. He set the new target of signing up 3 million subscribers by year-end but did not reveal how many customers it has attracted since the network launch.
Rakuten Mobile began accepting customer applications for its long-delayed launch in early-March, introducing an unlimited plan [5] with free service over the first 12 months for the first 3 million customers.
[1] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/featured-content/home-banner/virtualised-rakuten-mobile-4g-network-goes-live/
[2] https://twitter.com/tamin007/status/1261211879612940288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[3] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/featured-content/top-three/kddi-makes-for-japan-5g-hat-trick/
[4] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/featured-content/home-banner/rakuten-mobile-expects-steady-rise-in-customer-numbers/
[5] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/featured-content/home-banner/rakuten-mobile-unveils-aggressive-launch-strategy/
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