Rakuten Mobile completely changed its 5G tune in the span of four weeks. The operator today said its 5G network will be delayed about three months due to some supply chain issues related to the COVID-19 crisis.

As recently as mid-April, Tareq Amin, EVP and CTO at Rakuten Mobile, claimed the company’s 5G plans were on track to be commercially available in June. That 5G network won’t be available until September at the earliest now. The operator’s 4G LTE network, which went live last month, was also six months behind schedule. 

"In general, we are not seeing any side effects of the epidemic,” Amin told SDxCentral last month. "I also don't see an impact on our 5G construction. We might be slowed down on the number of base stations that we are able to construct, but I don't think it's going to be materialistic."

Rakuten Mobile did not explain the discrepancy but a spokesperson today told SDxCentral that "the COVID-19 impact is mainly on 5G network software testing and validation in areas where there are restrictions on movement." The operator's base station deployments are "running accordingly to plan" and it will still meet requirements set by Japan's telecommunications regulators, the spokeperson added. 

"We expect the impact on business performance to be minor," he said.

“I chalk this up to a combination of COVID-19 uncertainty and [Amin’s] over exuberance about the potential to accelerate deployments using a high degree of virtualization and open RAN (radio access networks) over traditional network build outs,” said Will Townsend, senior analyst Moor Insights & Strategy. 

“I believe it’s recoverable, but I expect that they will be much more conservative about the communication of future timelines. They can’t afford from a credibility standpoint to have another reset,” he added. 

A fully virtualized, open RAN, cloud-native network is called “bleeding edge for a reason, but Rakuten likes to put a positive spin even on its challenges,” noted Chris Nicoll, principal analyst at ACG Research.

Amin has, for example, boasted about releasing more than 350 software updates since June 2018, but Nicoll described those as primarily “bug and problem fixes” rather than new features. “The good news is that they got problems fixed, the bad news is on average they are doing a software load every two days,” he said. 

“That is not sustainable from a network operations and network stability perspective,” Nicoll explained. “It looks like an awful lot of bug and integration fixes are happening, but this really is to be expected. Even in deploying traditional 5G kit, there is an enormous amount of tuning that happens over the first 30 days or so. Adding a fully virtualized platform just adds more complexity and problems to address.”

Townsend also pinned at least some of Rakuten Mobile’s challenges on the type of architecture it’s deploying, particularly considering what’s transpired in just four weeks. Other operators like AT&T that are largely adhering to traditional network infrastructure have noted that subscriber adoption of 5G might be impacted due to the global pandemic, but 5G deployment plans are on track, Townsend explained. 

T-Mobile US and Verizon also this week said their respective 5G infrastructure deployments are on schedule. 

“Time will tell, but I believe people will see through any attempts by operators or infrastructure providers to assign complete blame for delays tied to COVID-19,” Townsend said. 

The “unprecedented” composition of Rakuten Mobile’s network infrastructure coupled with 5G, a new generation of cellular technology, allows for some wiggle room on timelines, Nicoll explained. 

“If Rakuten ends up being less than a year behind schedule, I think they can declare success,” he said. “If they can get 5G up and running more smoothly than the 4G network so far, all of the initial bumps and delays will be forgotten.”