Join Rakuten at MWC 2023 Barcelona to experience “Mobile as a Software”

Mobile World Congress (MWC) the world’s largest, most influential connectivity event, will return to Barcelona from February 27 – Mar 2, 2023, playing host to some of telecom’s most advanced technologies, impactful announcements and industry-shaping storylines for the year.

Following a headline-making MWC 2022, Rakuten is aiming to make waves once again at MWC 2023, with a busy schedule of speaking engagements, theater sessions, experience zone offerings and the company’s most impressive booth yet.

Introducing “Mobile as a Software”

After rolling out the world’s first and largest cloud-native mobile network in record time, Rakuten is bringing its vision of “Mobile as a Software” to MWC. Led by Rakuten Symphony CEO Tareq Amin, Rakuten leaders will share how the company is moving telecom’s center of gravity from hardware to software, resulting in added network agility, accelerated network build-outs and upgrades and dramatically more cost-efficient networks.

Meet us at the booth

The hub for all things Rakuten at MWC Barcelona 2023 will be at the company’s eye-catching two-story booth, located in Hall 2 of the Conference Center (Booth #2D46). There, visitors will experience what Mobile as a Software means first-hand, with interactive Experience Zones, a Booth Theater and more.

Experience Zones

Having worked with telecom and software partners across the globe to address a variety of next-gen telco challenges, Rakuten Symphony experts will share the insights they have accumulated in six distinct Experience Zones:

• Open RAN: Learn how we run resilient and secure cloud operations and make Open RAN work at scale with exceptional network performance.

• Operations: Proven by daily live operations, we’ll tell you how we digitalized all of the required processes around planning, building and operating mobile networks into a single platform, Symworld.

• Infrastructure Platform: Get up close with the products which help run the live and commercially operating 300,000+ Open RAN cells in Japan.

• Cloud: Having run a fully cloud-native end-to-end operation, we share our learnings around the deployment of different types of application and the best ways to approach cloud in telecom.

• Critical Infrastructure: We’ll discuss Open RAN security, Zero Trust deployments and other trending topics like sustainability and energy management.

• Rakuten Ecosystem: Meet representatives of an ecosystem of over 70 companies across multiple industries like banking, payment, TV and communications.

Partner Ecosystem

Rakuten partners will have a chance to show off their pioneering technology in a series of special demonstrations at the Rakuten booth. Some of the industry-leading vendors who partnered with Rakuten to build the world’s largest Open RAN network in Japan will display their products and showcase their technologies across the entire mobile architecture. Some of the partners you can look forward to meeting include Intel, Baytec, Sercomm, BMI, Supermicro, Qucell and Airspan.

Partner Programme – Introducing Mobile as a Software

On Tuesday, February 28 from 9 am – 12 pm in Hall 7, Theater 6, Rakuten will host a series of panel sessions for the Partner Programme event, inviting company leaders, key partners and customers to discuss how Mobile as a Software is redefining telecom.

Registrations of interest are available here:https://www.mwcbarcelona.com/agenda/session/introducing-mobile-as-a-software

Booth Theater

At the built-in booth theater, company leaders as well as participants from Rakuten’s wider ecosystem will present each day on how the Mobile as a Software mindset underscores everything Rakuten does.

Leaders take to the MWC stage

Several members of Rakuten’s leadership team will also take to the MWC stage for a number of can’t-miss keynotes and panel sessions throughout the four-day Congress. Here’s where you can catch them:

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 16:15-17:00 CET
Open RAN: The Debate
Raghunath Hariharan
CTO, Rakuten Symphony
Location: MWC Stage A, Hall 6

Tue, 28 Feb: 16:15 – 17:00 CET
Should MNOs have a Chief Metaverse Officer?
Geoff Hollingworth
CMO, Rakuten Symphony
Location: MWC Stage B, Hall 6

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 – 13:20-14:20 CET
Strengthening 5G Security in 2023
John Carse
CISO, Rakuten Mobile & Rakuten Symphony
Location: Theater 2, Hall 6

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 – 14:50-15:50 CET
Driving Supply Chain Resiliency & Interoperable Networks
Partha Seetala
President of the Cloud Business Unit, Rakuten Symphony
Location: Theater 2, Hall 6

Thu, 02 Mar 2023 – 10:00-10:45 CET
The Value of the Partner Ecosystem
Azita Arvani
North America CEO, Rakuten Symphony
Location: MWC Stage A, Hall 6

For more information about Rakuten at MWC, visit here.

Hope to see you in Barcelona!