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The pair made the announcement live at MWC 2019
Open source network specialist, Red Hat, has announced that it has been selected by Japanese telco Rakuten to help design its next generation mobile communications network.
The new network will pave the way for 5G rollout and is scheduled to be launched in October 2019.
The fully virtualised, end-to-end cloud native network will allow Rakuten to respond to customer demands in a more agile, nimble manner, while providing differentiated offerings from legacy me vendors.
“The next generation of mobile networks isn’t defined by inflexible, proprietary solutions; it’s frequently founded in cloud-native technologies driven by open source. From 5G to augmented reality, many advancements in mobile services are being powered by open software on open standards-based hardware. As a leader in building open, innovative telecommunications infrastructure, we are pleased to have helped Rakuten Mobile Network to not only develop its next-generation network but to also set the bar for how open, cloud-native designs can define mobile networking," said Chris Wright, vice president and CTO, Red Hat.
Rakuten will enter the Japanese Mobile market, which is dominated by three major players. The new network will help it launch 5G services and also use software innovation to speed up 4G and LTE services.
“By engaging with Red Hat, Rakuten Mobile Network has built a network functions virtualization (NFV) cloud, where network functions run in virtualized environments on general purpose servers rather than on specialised hardware and proprietary software,” said a Red Hat spokesperson.
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