Rakuten Symphony, a newly formed corporation following a formal split from its Rakuten parent, today announced an effort with Intel and Juniper Networks to develop an edge computing appliance to simplify cell site deployments in an open radio access network (RAN) environment. 

The Symware appliance features containerized cell site routing functions and a containerized distributed unit (DU) on a single-rack, general-purpose server. 

“Us, Intel, and Juniper have now converged cell site router functionality, DU functionality, fronthaul gateway, common public radio interface (CPRI) to enhanced CPRI conversion, all in this platform architecture,” Tareq Amin, CTO at Rakuten Mobile who now concurrently serves as CEO at Rakuten Symphony, said today during his keynote at MWC Los Angeles.

“This is something that any human being can carry, this could be deployed physically at a site or you could bring this to the edge in your data center,” he added. 

The kit provides a consistent routing stack across physical and virtualized RAN (vRAN) architecture. It enables 5G network slicing features in RAN and transport, including slice isolation, monitoring, and dynamic traffic steering through segment routing, according to the trio of companies involved. 

Symware also supports automation with zero-touch provisioning, telemetry and analytics for the components, and relies on Kubernetes for orchestration and networking. The pre-integrated hardware runs containerized RAN software from Altiostar — a company Rakuten recently acquired for $1 billion — Xeon D processors and FlexRAN reference software from Intel, and Juniper’s cloud-native routing stack.

Juniper and Intel last month shared plans to integrate its RAN intelligent controller (RIC) with Intel’s FlexRAN platform for open RAN development. That effort appears to run outside the scope of Symware, but it could be included or incorporated down the line. 

“This collaboration showcases how RAN workloads can be consolidated onto a single server and meet the performance, capacity, and cost requirements of 5G RAN deployments,” Dan Rodriguez, corporate VP and GM of Intel’s Network Platforms Group, said in a statement.

“Removing the obstacles of deploying open RAN in disaggregated production networks is critical for 5G growth. Integrated routing and open RAN in a single platform delivers cost and operational benefits for network operators,” Juniper CTO Raj Yavatkar said in a statement.

Rakuten Symphony this week also announced it'd reached an agreement to acquire Estmob, a South Korea-based, peer-to-peer file transfer service. The Japanese company said it plans to further develop Estmob’s Send Anywhere service and integrate the offering into Rakuten Symphony. Moreover, it added, Estmob’s presence in South Korea allows Rakuten Symphony to establish a new research and development outfit just across the Sea of Japan. 

Rakuten Symphony houses Rakuten Communications Platform, the recently acquired Altiostar, and Rakuten’s various open RAN technology assets and services. The business is framed around four pillars, according to Amin, including disaggregated RAN, unified cloud, an open RAN automation framework, and a team of iconoclasts eager to disrupt traditional RAN architecture. 

Rakuten focused early and aggressively on RAN because “frankly speaking, regardless of which country you build sites at, the most expensive thing that an operator deals with today is the infrastructure built for radio access.” He estimates radio access typically accounts for about 80% of operators’ capex.

Amin described Rakuten’s vision for a telco cloud as a horizontal, distributed framework that enables edge computing from the outset. “Today, every virtual network function and every containerized network function on Rakuten’s network is completely software. There is no bare metal, there is no proprietary hardware in any of the implementations. This was not simple,” he said. 

Rakuten Mobile’s network in Japan, including indoor and outdoor deployments, exceeds 140,000 active elements that are completely disaggregated, Amin said. 

He’s also increasingly encouraged by the continued pace of innovation in software, a continual effort that he believes will lead to better mobile network architecture. “It will get better because the software is getting better,” he said.

“We have a great opportunity to disrupt this industry. We have a great opportunity to really connect everything and bring better value to the overall society,” Amin concluded.