Mikitani flips the script on mobile ecosystems

At MWC Barcelona 2026, Rakuten Chairman and CEO Mickey Mikitani put the telecom industry on notice.

“The mobile business is heading in the wrong direction. Connectivity is critically important, but I believe the industry is trapped. It is vertically integrated, it is old and we need to redefine what a mobile network actually is.”

Opening day one of the industry’s most influential event with a keynote address, he offered an unvarnished assessment of the modern telecommunications landscape, while sharing a glimpse of what’s next.

“When I decided to get into the mobile business, everyone thought I was crazy,” he said. “They asked why I would want to get into a field that requires such massive investment to build a network. But I felt it was time for disruption.”

Redefining mobile networks

Launched in 2020, Rakuten Mobile delivered this very disruption, securing its competitive edge over the legacy infrastructure of traditional carriers.

“We really bet on Open RAN technology and fully virtualized our network, which was a very aggressive idea at the time,” he noted. “Today, we are a fully virtualized, software-based network – probably the largest in the world.”

Mikitani sees this technical shift as the only way to escape stagnation. He challenged industry players to stop viewing their infrastructure as a collection of hardware, and start seeing its latent value.

“I think we are sitting on a goldmine…. One asset is our subscribers; the other is our data. The question is how we can use those two assets to maximize revenue and bring down the total cost of operations.”

Connectivity as a bridge, not a silo

When it comes to subscribers, Mikitani noted that telecom providers often approach digital services from the wrong direction.

“Many mobile network companies try to build an ecosystem on top of their mobile service. We did it the other way around,” he said. “We started with OTT services: e-commerce, travel, banking, credit cards, payments, brokerage, and insurance. We have 70 different businesses in Japan, and yet we felt that adding mobile into this mix would make our overall business much stronger.”

By treating mobile connectivity as a bridge, rather than a silo, Rakuten Mobile has successfully converted casual subscribers into ‘power users,’ active across the entire ecosystem. This has produced a dramatic multiplier effect.

“If a member of the Rakuten ecosystem – someone who used to just buy products or book travel – joins Rakuten Mobile, they use 2.43 times more services than they did before. They buy about 50% more from our marketplace, they use our travel services 20% more, and they use their credit cards 30% more. It’s huge,” Mikitani revealed. “Getting that connectivity definitely increases the ‘brain share’ of the brand.”

Sitting on a goldmine of data

A telecom provider’s ultimate advantage, Mikitani argued, is a depth of information that rivals even the giants of the tech world. A modern telecom provider should be a data powerhouse first, and a utility second.

You are sitting on a goldmine,” he repeated. “In fact, you have much more data than some of the biggest hyperscalers, because you know everything. Whether or not you can use it effectively depends on if you have a smart strategy.”

Rakuten’s own ecosystem sees over 45 million users make some form of transaction every month.

“They’re not just coming to our website; they’re buying or booking, or doing something,” Mikitani noted. “We have reached 10 million mobile subscribers, and we have 70+ services in Japan. Based on this, we can estimate we have more than 3 trillion data points for transactions per year.”

“We developed our own large language model to personalize the user experience, and we use those data points to maximize ad revenue. As a result, advertising has become a major revenue driver, based on the data we’ve learned from our mobile service.”

The volume of data available to telecom providers could be what helps them break out of the ‘commodity’ trap, Mikitani proposed. “We can guess, analyze, and learn about the behavior of our consumers… Data is our goldmine, and the key is learning how to utilize it.”

A symphony of services

“I truly believe it is time for the telecom industry to change; to move from just providing network connectivity to offering enriched consumer services,” Mikitani told the conference. “If you can convert your telecom service into an enriched ecosystem, it is going to be incredibly positive for your business.”

Rakuten Symphony was created to do just this: export Rakuten’s ‘ecosystem-as-a-service’ model, complete with software, reward programs, and social messaging platforms.

Reflecting on Rakuten Mobile’s own breakneck rollout, Mikitani offered a final nugget of advice to those hesitant to change.

“People questioned if we could even build a network. We built over 100,000 radio stations within three years by ourselves, and we did it by betting on a fully virtualized network. Now, we are rebuilding the entire business model. Through Rakuten Symphony, I hope we will be able to help you do the same.”