Etisalat, which was one of the earliest major operators to embrace Open RAN, has gone a step further in seeking to drive scale into the ecosystem by putting its support behind the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP). The UAE-based regional giant joins fellow Middle Eastern operator STC, as well as Telefónica, in endorsing RCP.
The platform is Rakuten’s attempt to create an agreed framework within which hardware and software from many vendors can be pre-tested and validated to ensure interoperability and reduce integration time. Eventually, virtual network functions could be downloaded from an ‘app store’ onto white box cloud hardware and open radio units, says Rakuten.
There is a long way to go to achieve that vision and the support of large numbers of operators will be required to set a de facto standard for the framework, especially when other operators, such as NTT Docomo, appear to have similar ambitions to turn their inhouse platforms and ecosystems into something more generic and scalable. So far, the fledgling RCP – which should be commercial later this year – is largely built on the sharing of Rakuten’s own work on building a multivendor Open RAN, for which it charges a fee to supporters. That makes it very valuable, especially to smaller operators without significant internal or external integration budgets.
But it imposes a set of suppliers, and a concept of the network, on the whole industry, even though Rakuten, and Japan, are far from typical of the mass of mobile operators and markets. Partnerships, integrations and best practice learnings from a variety of operators will be important to broaden the platform and make it adaptable to many markets and business models, so Etisalat’s participation is a positive step.
Tareq Amin, CTO of Rakuten Mobile and the brain behind RCP, says over 15 operators are now paying for access to RCP. “A lot of people don’t know that the sales already started,” he told reporters recently. “And these are not small customers. Some of them are very, very massive.” Only Etisalat and US wholesale networks challenger Ligado have stated their commitment to RCP publicly. STC and Telefónica have formed alliances with Rakuten but not yet publicly discussed developing a specific blueprint within RCP.
Etisalat will work with Rakuten to develop “a reference blueprint for mobile broadband networks and Open RAN technology based on the Rakuten Communications Platform”. It is unlikely to broaden the supplier base enabling the RCP blueprints very much – its Open RAN deployment in the UAE, which has been piloted since early 2020, worked mainly with Altiostar, Cisco and NEC, which are also central vendors in Rakuten’s roll-out. However, it has also announced trials with Parallel Wireless.
The other major greenfield Open RAN deployer on the horizon, the USA’s Dish Network, has so far selected some different suppliers, including Fujitsu for some of its radio units, and Mavenir for software, and so could be valuable in extending RCP. But while citing Rakuten as a role model for its planned cloud-native 5G roll-out, Dish has not joined RCP as yet.
So far, Etisalat has focused its early Open RAN efforts on its home market, where it has 10.4m subscribers, but its objective is to have an open, repeatable template that can enable affordable 4G and 5G deployments across its diverse footprint. It has about 135m customers in total, mainly in the Middle East and Africa, plus 25.5m in Pakistan. Its other major markets include Egypt with 26.4m customers, and its Maroc Telecom group, which has about 73m subscribers across 11 African markets. In some of these markets, Etisalat believes Open RAN will help accelerate the process of extending 4G cost-effectively to underserved and rural communities.
Hatem Bamatraf, CTO at Etisalat International, said RCP would “leverage a cost-effective, cloud-native, open RAN-based mobile network architecture that is secure, scalable and reliable”.
On Rakuten’s most recent earnings call, Amin told investors: “We are optimistic that in 2021 we should be able to start reporting publicly some of the activities that we are doing in RCP. 2021 will be a really positive year for us to take what we have started building in Japan and start the journey of globalization. Revenues are already starting to happen, especially in the OSS layer and orchestration, and this year we will launch our BSS platform.”