Rakuten’s Symphony platform continued to show strong growth through the end of last year, and is set to underpin Rakuten Mobile’s 5G build-out transformation.

Rakuten established its Symphony division in late 2021, with a focus on expanding its open radio access network (RAN) architecture into more networks around the world.

The division initially housed the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP) and Rakuten’s various open RAN technology assets and services. The RCP platform has since been rebranded as Symworld following its acquisition of Robin.io.

Rakuten Symphony generated $476 million in revenues last year, bolstered by 14 global contracts, including deals with AT&T, Cisco, Nokia, and Qualcomm. That number is the same as it reported during its previous financial quarter, though Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony CEO Tareq Amin explained during the company’s latest earnings call that the vendor was sitting on eight additional contracts that were in “final stages of closure.”

Amin also stated Rakuten Symphony ended 2022 with a sales pipeline in excess of $4 billion in revenues, which was significantly more than the $3.1 billion it had at the end of its third-fiscal quarter of 2022.

Rakuten Mobile is also going to lean on its Symphony platform as it looks to reduce capex and expand its footprint. The carrier is in the final phase of expanding its carrier-owned footprint in Japan, a move that will allow it to reduce roaming costs it’s currently paying to rivals.

Rakuten CEO and Chairman Hiroshi Mikitani said the carrier would be spending around $2.2 billion on capex this year, which is similar to what it has been spending over the past several years to fuel its network build. However, that amount is expected to be cut in half in 2024, and then a further 20% beginning in 2025.

Amin added that Rakuten Mobile will be able to accomplish this due to its cloud-native architecture that results in “80% less spend than others.”

“We have zero incremental costs to deploy our core network,” Amin explained, adding that the carrier has scaled its network to support 20 million customers. Those network assets are running as virtualized and containerized software on Rakuten’s cloud, which Amin said would allow the carrier to scale “with no implication on capex.”

The carrier is also banking on new spectrum to help lower the cost of its network expansion. Rakuten executives repeatedly touted the carrier’s plan to begin using Japan’s so-called “platinum band” spectrum in the 900 MHz band to help it expand coverage. The spectrum was still being cleared with Rakuten Mobile expecting to begin deploying those assets beginning in early 2024.

Rakuten last year was awarded 20 megahertz of spectrum in the 1.7 GHz band that was previously reserved for the country’s military. The carrier also controls spectrum in the 3.7 GHz, 4.5 GHz, and 28 GHz bands.

Those cost reductions will be important for Rakuten’s financial future. The company’s total losses nearly tripled last year compared with 2021, despite a modest increase in overall revenues.

The company last quarter announced plans to shift employees across the organization in an attempt to become “lean and profitable.” Amin at that time shied away from calling the move job cuts and explained that the shift would result in moving employees into other areas of the broader Rakuten business.

“As we are nearing the end of the major construction build out, I would not classify this as Rakuten Mobile is doing layoffs, but Rakuten Mobile is now focused on our lean operation,” Amin said during the Q3 earnings call in regards to a question about whether the move would lead to layoffs at the company. “The staff that we would have required to continue the build and investment into the build, obviously as the number of base station reduces, such staff we are transferring to other functions within the group.”