Mobile World Congress, Barcelona — Partha Seetala, the president of the Unified Cloud Business Unit at Rakuten Symphony told Silverlinings at Mobile World Congress that his company uses its sister Rakuten Mobile network as a place to test and develop cloud-native mobile systems that it can then sell to other operators.
This is yet another example of symbotic relationship between cloud-based operators.
Think farmer ants and aphids!
Rakuten Symphony bolstered its edge and telco cloud capabilities by buying startup Robin.io this time last year. Former Robin CEO Seetala now serves as the president of cloud at the unit.
The cloud boss said that mobile operators can use Rakuten Symphony’s Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) to ease and automate the deployment of base stations. “They can be brought up in a matter of minutes,” he claimed, calling it a plug-and-play system.
He said that the company is focused on delivering systems that can help enable open RAN, offer better energy management, and further automate the infrastructure of 5G networks.
The company unveiled Symware 2.0 software at the show. This product is designed to manage high-capacity cell sites in a centralized deployment scenario. The firm said it can manage spectrum complexity and carrier aggregation in an open radio access network environment, removing a roadblock for mobile operators that want to use that technology.
Rakuten Symphony’s customers include operators like Dish Wireless, MTN, and Salam. Vendor partners include AWS, Intel and NEC, among others. Seetala told us that the company has more enterprise customers but that telcos write much bigger checks.
Check out all of our coverage from the show on our Mobile World Congress Content Hub.