Japan-based Rakuten Mobile advanced open RAN partnerships with domestic suppliers, separately announcing collaborations with Fujitsu and NEC to develop and market the operator’s fully virtualised, cloud-native mobile communications platform in global markets.

Rakuten Mobile stated Fujitsu will develop 4G and 5G radio units for the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP) and the companies will define joint global launch plans.

Fujitsu already supplies evaluation tests for interconnection verification in a multi-vendor environment and hardware quality corroboration tests.

Tareq Amin, Rakuten Mobile CTO, said: “With Japanese quality and a highly competitive cost structure as major differentiators, our joint efforts with Fujitsu are on track to bring significant incremental value to our customers and partners around the world.”

Amin said there is strong demand for high-performance, cost-effective and high-quality radios for LTE and 5G based on open and virtualised RAN.

In a separate announcement, Rakuten Mobile explained its deal with NEC expands on a partnership forged in 2020 to develop a standalone (SA) 5G core network, by providing radios and engineering services for open RAN systems to accelerate rollout of the RCP outside of Japan.

NEC EVP Atsuo Kawamura said the deal will boost the companies’ contribution to open and virtual mobile networks.

Rakuten Mobile selected NEC as a 5G equipment supplier in 2019.