NEC and Fujitsu bid to standardize Open RAN interoperability testing globally Japanese operators and vendors have always produced highly advanced cellular technology, but this has largely stayed within the home country, and within the highly customized networks of MNOs such as NTT Docomo. With the advent of Open RAN, however, all this is changing and Japanese suppliers are bidding for global presence, heavily supported by their government, which sees the chance to build a 5G/6G industry with international impact, around a ‘Japan-first’ platform and ecosystem. The most dramatic example has been Rakuten, which has not only set up a fourth MNO and deployed a cloud-native open 4G/5G RAN, but has now set up a vendor called Symphony to commercialize the…