TPG Telecom, Rakuten Mobile team up for 5G OpenRAN trial

Singapore’s new fourth mobile operator TPG Telecom (Singapore) has selected Japanese counterpart Rakuten Mobile to help it run joint 5G OpenRAN trials on a new network in the city state. With the latter currently in the throes of building out its own 4G mobile network in Japan – often touted as the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualised, cloud-native network – the OpenRAN collaboration reportedly aligns with Rakuten’s open, multivendor network approach. Mobile World Live cites TPG manager and acting CEO Richard Tan as saying that the trial is designed to speed up the adoption of fifth-generation networks and SDN technology based on open interfaces and ‘community-developed standards running on common hardware’. Meanwhile, Rakuten Mobile chief technology officer Tareq Amin noted: ‘The strategic partnership is a validation of Rakuten Mobile’s strategy and we are happy to share our innovative end-to-end virtualisation solutions built on our vision of an open and multivendor mobile network ecosystem’, adding that Singapore’s high fibre density makes it ‘uniquely suited’ for rapid OpenRAN adoption.