Japan’s Rakuten Mobile making gains with Open RAN

Rakuten Mobile, Japan’s upstart mobile telecom network operator, sees light at the end of the financial tunnel as subscriber growth heads toward breakeven on an operating cash flow basis in 2024.

Breakeven will be a milestone for the Open RAN (Radio Access Network) standard that allows for various companies to supply different parts of a telecommunications network.

Open RAN gives telecom service providers more flexibility and independence from large suppliers of complete proprietary systems such as China’s Huawei, Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia, and smaller national champions like South Korea’s Samsung and Japan’s NEC and Fujitsu.