It’s about time the mobile industry met Symworld
Tareq Amin, CEO, Rakuten Symphony
For too long in telecoms, the time of network operators has been mistreated. For too long they’ve been asked to wait for the benefits of next-gen tech; to imagine a future of unlimited speed, scale and innovation that’s always just out of reach.
With today’s announcement of Symworld — a platform to help telecom operators scale at the speed of cloud — we’re saying the time is now.
Symworld: How we bring scale to telecom
Symworld is Rakuten Symphony taking the capabilities initially introduced inside the Rakuten Communications Platform to the global market. Now in general availability, new and incumbent network operators can take advantage of intuitive, one-touch access to a suite of next-gen network software apps. The platform can modernize any network and move operations from being coordinated by people and paper to being driven by software and data. And it’s about time.
The successful public cloud providers use their own services first then sell them to others. Rakuten Symphony is the first telecom company to do the same in the cloud-native era and as we have seen that the possible outcomes are transformational. It’s about time to stop accepting the status quo. And it’s about time to challenge the status quo supply chain to truly embrace the new reality and help their customers be successful.
“Symworld is everything operators need to start automating all or parts of the network RIGHT NOW.”
Tareq Amin, CEO, Rakuten Symphony
It’s about time that terms like “open” started to mean something in the present tense and critically, that operators are able to move as quickly as the market necessitates, scaling fast to pursue countless new opportunities.
I hope you saw the news earlier this month about Rakuten Mobile reaching 96% population coverage four years ahead of schedule.
THIS is what we mean when we say unprecedented scale: When we tell you that it’s possible to deliver a world-class network at a pace previously thought impossible while still hitting network cost reduction targets.
*The screen illustrations shown in this blog post were produced during the development stages and may differ from the actual product.
A journey that began in Japan
Before Rakuten Mobile became Japan’s fourth major operator in 2019, before we even broke ground on our network, we were told our approach would never work. Open RAN (radio access network) wasn’t ready for prime time, we heard. An internet services company could never make it in telco, was another refrain. But we never deviated in our mission to reimagine telecoms. And since day one, we’ve done nothing but prove the doubters wrong, earning recognition after recognition for the world’s first, fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network built on open standards.
“Mobile industry transformation will not be about any one product. It will be about adopting a system mindset that prioritizes innovation and speed over the same legacy approaches.”
The journey that began with the creation of Rakuten Mobile in Japan continues with our announcement today. We are taking the technology that disrupted our home market and bringing it to the world. We are bringing the same belief in our ability to operate advanced mobile services in a fraction of the time and cost of conventional approaches, with no compromise to network quality or security, to empower an industry much in need of change.
The future of mobile network delivery is about speed, agility and the ability to compete
Symworld is everything operators need to start automating all or parts of the network RIGHT NOW; to evaluate, trial and deploy open system components like the Open RAN, the RIC (RAN intelligent controller), service assurance, security and customer experience management via apps instead of getting bogged down in long purchase cycles for more products.
“It’s time to disrupt telecom. Let’s do it together, as fast as we can.”
Mobile industry transformation will not be about any one product. It will be about adopting a system mindset that prioritizes innovation and speed over the same legacy approaches. It will be about recognizing the cloud-driven realities of this business and capitalizing on massive opportunity while it’s still here. Because the time is up for waiting for the old guard to change.
At Mobile World Congress, we’ll be taking the wraps off Symworld and showing the industry what we can do to help all of us move forward, swiftly in a common pursuit. (Click here to join us.)
In the meantime, watch this page for more on Rakuten Symphony and Symworld as the show approaches.
It’s time to disrupt telecom. Let’s do it together, as fast as we can.
