Rakuten Mobile picked Cisco, Nokia, and F5 as partners for its long-gestating 5G standalone (5G SA) mobile network deployment in Japan, deals that are important strategic wins for those vendors.

The deployment will run on Rakuten's in-house Symphony cloud-native platform, purpose-built for telecom workloads.

Rakuten will use Cisco’s mobile Packet Core Portfolio to deploy 5G and AI services. F5 will integrate its BIG-IP Next CNFs containerized network software into Cisco’s Packet Core, where it will secure and manage traffic between the 5G core and the open internet or enterprise networks.

Nokia will deliver cloud-native network functions (CNFs) covering authentication, user data management, signaling, analytics, and IMS voice for the 5G SA core. Lifecycle operations for the CNFs are automated via Nokia’s management tools tailored for multi-cloud, multivendor environments.

While previous indications from the company had suggested it would replace Cisco with NEC for its 5G SA rollout, Rakuten will retain relations with one of the key players behind its open radio access network (open RAN) backbone.

Daryl Schoolar, analyst and director at Recon Analytics, told SDxCentral he was surprised to see Cisco in the partner list, referring to comments in 2020 that Rakuten did not want to use Cisco’s cloud infrastructure for the deployment.

“The announcement was vague when it came to how Cisco would be delivering the core network, so you don’t know if either Cisco or Rakuten changed its mind when it came to the cloud infrastructure,” Schoolar said.

Multivendor plan continues

Schoolar did note that the multi-partner announcement is business as usual for Rakuten and its multivendor legacy.

Aside from Cisco, Nokia, and F5 are already part of that legacy. In 2019, F5 partnered with the Japanese firm to support the launch of its fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network, helping optimize services and lay the groundwork for 5G‑ready architecture.

Since then, its CNFs have been available in Rakuten Cloud, as tailored around security, policy enforcement, IP address management, and DNS resolution.

Nokia, meanwhile, supplied RAN gear and mobile transport solutions during Rakuten’s pre-launch phase in 2019. Since then, the two companies have worked together on cloud-native integration and 5G deployment, with Rakuten adopting Nokia’s 5G SA-ready AirGile cloud-native platform.

Rakuten last year also began testing Nokia’s wavelength routing technology for long haul and metro optical networks to create the photonic mesh mobile backhaul network necessary for 5G-Advanced to take off.

With this prior history, Rakuten Mobile’s choice of Nokia makes sense, even with existing key players in 5G SA for Japan like Ericsson.

SoftBank, which began deploying 5G SA in 2021, announced it is expanding its Ericsson partnership to broaden its 5G Standalone service in Japan - coincidentally on the same day as the Rakuten unveiling.

What took so long?

Schoolar also noted Rakuten's comparatively slow pace in rolling out its 5G SA network.

With Rakuten Mobile’s deployment of 5G SA coming after deployments from the likes of SoftBank and NTT DoCoMo, some analysts have noticed Rakuten’s comparatively slow pace in roll out.

“I am surprised that it has taken this long for Rakuten, a company known for being on the cutting edge of mobile infrastructure technology, to deploy 5G SA,” Schoolar said.