Rakuten Symphony today boosted its open radio access network (RAN) platform with cloud-native network functions (CNFs) from F5 that target networking and security requirements for wireless carriers.

A quartet of F5’s “BIG-IP Next” branded CNFs will be available on Rakuten Symphony later this year, including the edge firewall, policy enforcer, domain name system (DNS), and the carrier grade network address translation (CGNAT), according to both companies.

Rakuten and F5 claim the CNFs can be deployed in an automated manner while supporting continuous deployment with a lifecycle management system that reduces testing and installation from months to a matter of hours.

Rakuten Mobile also plans to deploy F5’s BIG-IP Next CNFs on its 5G open RAN in Japan, following three years of collaboration between the companies. 

“In this day and age, it is not acceptable for software delivery to be complicated and cumbersome in the telecom industry when it is not like this elsewhere in other industries,” Rakuten Symphony CEO Tareq Amin said in a statement. “The simplicity delivered by this collaboration will enable faster deployment, more participation, and more innovation in the industry.”

Rakuten boosts F5’s security profile

F5’s inclusion in Rakuten Symphony underscores a years-long effort it undertook to boost its application security portfolio through a series of acquisitions and internal development. 

The company acquired Shape Security for $1 billion in late 2019, shortly after it acquired web server company Nginx. It also acquired Volterra for $500 million in early 2021 and followed up with a $68 million deal to acquire Threat Stack. 

Rakuten Continues Global Open RAN Push

Rakuten Symphony, which became a standalone company to push its open RAN architecture into more networks in late 2021, has multiple acquisitions under its belt as well. The company earlier this year acquired Robin.io for an undisclosed sum, and purchased Altiostar for more than $1 billion last summer. 

The Japanese company has many big-name partners, including AT&T, Cisco, Juniper Networks, Nokia, Qualcomm, and others. 

While it’s assembled a large platform of software and hardware vendors for open RAN, some analysts question the motivations and ultimate outcomes of that effort. 

“It’s their ecosystem,” and as such, “I don’t think it’s the truest definition of open RAN per se,” Mike Thelander, president and founder of Signals Research Group, said during a panel at MWC Barcelona 2022. 

“You can call it open RAN if you want to, but I’m not sure that’s the vision the industry had when they first started talking about open RAN,” he added. 

Monica Paolini, founder and principal at Senza Fili, echoed that sentiment, adding that although there is an attempt to achieve openness at the equipment level, closure remains at a higher level under Rakuten Symphony’s model. That “kind of goes counter to the idea of having everything truly open,” she said.