Many operators say, confidentially, that in their ideal world, they would start 5G deployment at a later date when new cloud architectures and radio technologies are more mature. However, government and commercial pressures are forcing them to embark early, which involves compromises in terms of the technologies enabling their first roll-outs. Imagine the pressure on Rakuten Mobile, then, which has to build a network from scratch to launch commercial services in one of the world’s most competitive markets, Japan, this year. It is, of course, starting with 4G, but it is aiming to deploy the world’s first end-to-end cloud-native mobile network, so in architectural terms it is closer to ‘true 5G’, and should be 5G-ready. While this is easier to…