2021 Glotel Awards: Rakuten Mobile wins for Ground-breaking Virtualization Initiative and 5G Innovation
Rakuten Mobile’s world-first cellular network has once again been recognized by the global telecoms industry.
Announced November 23, Rakuten Mobile, in conjunction with Altiostar, a Rakuten Symphony Company, was named a Telecoms.com Global Telecoms (Glotel) Awards winner in two categories: Ground-breaking Virtualization Initiative for Rakuten Mobile’s 5G Open RAN on Kubernetes; and Best Operator 5G Innovation for Rakuten Mobile’s 5G Open RAN Cloud-Native Network.
“I hope this recognition will also inspire telcos around the world to consider the potential of Open RAN to power the future of mobile network architecture.”
Tareq Amin, CTO, Rakuten Mobile
“I’m honored for Rakuten Mobile to have won two Glotel awards for our achievements in Open RAN,” commented Rakuten Mobile CTO Tareq Amin. “When designing the Rakuten Mobile network in Japan, we brought together the brightest minds in tech to do something no mobile network operator has done before. I hope this recognition will also inspire telcos around the world to consider the potential of Open RAN to power the future of mobile network architecture.”
This year’s Global Telecoms Awards featured hundreds of submissions across 20 categories, with Glotel judging conducted by an independent panel of guest judges from within the industry.
“It was once more an immense pleasure to oversee the Glotel awards,” said Scott Bicheno, Editor of Telecoms.com. “No matter what challenges are thrown at the telecoms industry it just keeps innovating, progressing and succeeding. As ever, this year’s entries offered a fascinating snapshot of the very best our industry has to offer and the winners should feel very proud of prevailing over such stiff competition.”
Last week’s Glotel Awards are just the latest honors to be awarded to Rakuten’s trailblazing cellular network this year. Rakuten Mobile shined at GSMA’s 2021 Global Mobile (GLOMO) Awards at MWC Barcelona, taking home the award for “Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough” for its submission for 5G Open RAN on Kubernetes, as well as “CTO Choice: Outstanding Mobile Technology Award,” the highest level of recognition at these awards.
Rakuten Mobile was also recognized at the Opensignal 5G Global Mobile Network Experience Awards* for its 5G Network Speed, which ranked highly among global mobile operators, the GTI Awards 2021 for market development, and scored 920 points out of 1,000 for its network in Tokyo in a report by independent analyst company umlaut.
After a highly eventful 2021, Rakuten Mobile’s momentum shows no sign of slowing. With the recent launch of Rakuten Symphony and continued growth of Rakuten’s network in Japan, the Rakuten Group is poised to create even more disruption in the global telco space in 2022.
*Opensignal Awards – 5G Global Mobile Network Experience Awards 2021 based on independent analysis of mobile measurements recorded during the period January 1 – June 29, 2021.
