Jun 05, 2019 (Nikkei) - E-commerce group Rakuten, Japan's newest wireless carrier, will partner with information technology group NEC to install roughly 16,000 low-cost 5G base stations across the country over five years, Nikkei has learned.
Billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani's Rakuten has chosen a domestic supplier to build out its 5G network as carriers in Japan and elsewhere shun equipment made by China's Huawei Technologies.
Rakuten and NEC will seek to develop an inexpensive 5G antenna based on the concept of network virtualization, in which the functions needed to run a network rely on software provided through the internet. The goal is to reduce the need for specialized hardware, allowing existing infrastructure to be upgraded to the 5G standard more easily.
Lowering the cost of network infrastructure could accelerate the spread of faster fifth-generation wireless communication in Japan.
The e-commerce group, whose businesses include digital marketplace Rakuten Ichiba and online brokerage Rakuten Securities, will supply the cloud technology while NEC supplies the wireless units. They aim to fully install the network by the end of fiscal 2024.
Rakuten has the lowest cost of base station installation among Japan's four top wireless carriers, an analysis of plans submitted to the communications ministry shows. The company's cost totals about 8.2 million yen ($76,000) per unit, only 10% to 20% of the level for industry leader NTT Docomo.
Rakuten enters Japan's mobile phone market in October with 4G service and looks to debut 5G service in June 2020, touting low costs to pull customers away from Docomo, KDDI and SoftBank Corp.
