It is not only Rakuten that is bringing cloud-native technology to networks in Japan. Last week, Cisco talked about a proof of concept (PoC) for a 5G NR Standalone network, with a cloud-native core, for the second Japanese MNO, KDDI. The PoC involves Cisco’s Ultra Packet Core, while its Network Services Orchestrator will coordinate multivendor technologies and enable capabilities such as network slicing and automation. “Service creation is critical, and the mobile core is the service creation platform,” said Jonathan Davidson, general manager of Cisco’s Service Provider Business, in a statement. “One of the most important decisions to get right in 5G is the cloud-native core. KDDI is seeing the true benefits of this uniquely designed 4G to 5G evolution…