Thousands of column inches have been devoted to Rakuten Mobile and its cloud-native 4G/5G network in recent years, but from a commercial point of view, being a new entrant in a mature market like Japan is very tough. The network may be the world’s most cloud-based and open large-scale deployment, but the MNO business results are far less spectacular. Rakuten Mobile has resorted to commercial tactics that are far more conventional than its architecture, notably price wars that are starting to impact on its rivals, notably Softbank (see below) – but without propelling Rakuten to hit its customer share targets. But the mobile business, if analyzed as a conventional MNO, has always been a red herring. The cellular network is…