Rakuten Mobile and Fujitsu announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to develop Open RAN solutions for the global market.

Rakuten Mobile and Fujitsu will collaborate to jointly develop 4G and 5G Open RAN solutions, promoting innovation. Fujitsu will develop new O-RAN based 4G and 5G radio units that Rakuten Mobile will integrate into its Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP) offering, with an eye toward expansion into the global market.

“As we start introducing Rakuten Communications Platform to telco operators, governments and enterprises around the world, we are seeing strong demand for high-performance, cost-effective and high-quality radios for 4G LTE and 5G New Radio (NR) based on open and virtualized RAN,” said Tareq Amin, Representative Director, Executive Vice President and CTO of Rakuten Mobile.

“Fujitsu’s capabilities in advanced wireless technologies and open architecture integration will play an active role in the global expansion of the Rakuten Communications Platform,” said Shingo Mizuno, Corporate Executive Officer, Vice Head of System Platform Business (in charge of Network Business).

The MoU will allow the two companies to define joint global go-to-market plans to address the current and needs of 4G and 5G Open RAN customers, delivering flexible, cost-effective solutions leveraging Rakuten and Fujitsu’s respective strengths and expertise.

RCP is Rakuten’s cloud-native, software-centric, and Open RAN based platform that helps telcos accelerate their migration towards 5G and Open RAN leveraging the power of the cloud, virtualization and openness. Through its collaboration with Fujitsu, Rakuten Mobile will expand the RAN portfolio of RCP with high quality 4G and 5G RUs.

Fujitsu is already contributing to the quality assurance of the Rakuten Communications Platform by providing services for Rakuten Mobile’s mobile network in Japan, including evaluation tests for interconnection verification in a multi-vendor environment and hardware quality verification tests.