Rakuten Mobile plans to use new routing technologies from network gear maker Cisco to expand its capacity to support business customers with 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) services.
Rakuten, which has 4 million subscribers on its mobile network in Japan, will use the new technology to make the entire network more automated to deploy services faster, reduce latency and lower power consumption.

“We are going big into enterprise now, in a very elegant cost-efficient manner, without having to incur cost addition,” Rakuten Chief Technology Officer Tareq Amin told analysts.

Companies such as Dish Network, which is aiming to setting up a 5G network in the United States by 2023, are building networks based on Open RAN as it offers to cut costs.

Cisco was the top-ranked vendor in the service provider router and switch market, followed by Huawei, Nokia, and Juniper Networks, says Shin Umeda, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group.