The less bumpy way to ride e-commerce = Rakuten (Seite 357)

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Rakuten Altiostar won two from 20 of the telecoms industry’s most prestigious awards

2021 Glotel Awards winners unveiled

3 days ago

The winners of the telecoms industry’s most prestigious awards event have finally been revealed.
A healthy range of companies were represented this year, with the 20 awards spread among no less than 13 winners.

Best Operator 5G Innovation
Winner: Altiostar – Rakuten Mobile 5G Open RAN Cloud-Native Network

Ground-breaking Virtualization Initiative
Winner: Altiostar – Rakuten Mobile for 5G Open RAN on Kubernetes
Highly commended: VMware – Telco Cloud Platform

https://telecoms.com/512313/2021-glotel-awards-winners-unvei…

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Rakuten Advertising Takes Home Four Awards & Highly Commended in Seven International Performance Marketing Award Categories

By Rakuten Advertising | October 19, 2021

Rewarding creativity, innovation and excellence, the International Performance Marketing awards celebrate the industry’s most exceptional campaigns from across the globe. After being shortlisted for the awards in September, Rakuten Advertising was proud to take home four major awards and highly commended in seven categories at Monday’s ceremony in London.

Best Incentive Partner Campaign or Strategy: Rakuten Advertising, Qantas Shopping, ECHT & Endota Spa

Best Integrated Performance Marketing Campaign: Rakuten Advertising & Aje

Best Retail and e-Commerce Campaign: Rakuten Advertising, Soreto & Forever New

Best Performance Marketing Campaign – APAC: Rakuten Advertising, 55Haitao & Clinique

https://blog.rakutenadvertising.com/en-uk/events/rakuten_ade…

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Buy with a price target of ¥2234

We value Rakuten using a normalized EBITA multiple. We apply a country-specific multiple of 14 for Japan. This takes into account the country’s nominal inflation, nominal risk-free rate, real return, and its equity risk premium. This translates to a discount rate of 9.4%. We apply a premium to the Internet & Fintech business and a discount to the mobile business for a blended multiple to account for business model-specific risk. We thus apply a blended 16.4 EBITA multiple to 2025 earnings.

Rakuten has been dragged through the mud for the past few years. However, we are getting to a point in time where the end is in sight and long-term investors can see through the storm at a great asset being sold at a bargain price. We rate the company a Buy with a price target of ¥2234, implying 99% upside from current levels.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4450502-rakuten-a-pot-of-go…

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“Get out of the lab. I think we have done enough lab testing… This technology works, it works really well… there are huge opportunities here.”

How Germany will harness advanced connectivity honed in Japan

2 hours ago

One of Germany’s leading internet companies, 1&1, is building a groundbreaking 5G network that promises to deliver a step change in the performance of mobile connectivity. Drawing on Rakuten Mobile’s experience in Japan, 1&1 and Rakuten Symphony are setting up the network with a radical new radio architecture, called Open RAN (radio access network), in Germany – it will be the first fully virtualized mobile network in Europe.

In a panel discussion at Rakuten Optimism 2021, Michael Martin, CEO, Drillisch Netz AG and Director Mobile Radio Network, 1&1 Telecommunication SE, explained how Rakuten Mobile has paved the way for his company and other operators to take advantage of highly flexible and cost-effective Open RAN technology.

“Two, three years ago, I think the time wouldn’t have been ready, not even for a greenfield operator, to start with an Open RAN architecture immediately,” he said during a panel discussion with Tareq Amin, CEO of Rakuten Symphony and Group CTO of the Rakuten Group, moderated by Rabih Dabboussi, Chief Revenue Officer of Rakuten Symphony. But since Rakuten has “built this Open RAN 1.0 network already in Japan, we are confident that you already made your mistakes in Japan and can take the learnings into our Germany Open RAN 2.0 network and I am very confident that we will have a successful Open RAN implementation.”

The most advanced architecture yet

In the same session, Amin described the mindset and entrepreneurship of 1&1, which is a highly successful mobile virtual network operator in Germany, as “utterly amazing,” adding: “I think we are going to do something even better than we have done in Japan.”

Noting that radio access equipment accounts for at least 70% of the capital spending required to build a cellular network, Amin explained that Open RAN technology is designed to make cellular networks as elastic as IT systems working in the cloud, meaning they can scale up and down in line with demand.

The new network will be able to heal itself, organize itself, optimize itself and be able to adapt its capacity to usage, added Amin. The net result is that end-users will enjoy better coverage and greater reliability.

Total transparency on costs

Another innovative feature of the partnership between Rakuten Symphony and 1&1 is an unprecedented level of cost transparency. “To my knowledge, this is the first contract that has ever been signed in which we guaranteed [total cost of ownership] transparency to our partner,” Amin said.

Martin described the partnership with Rakuten as one of three key pillars of its plan to deploy a 5G network in Germany. The other pillars are Open RAN and 1&1’s existing customer base, which numbers more than 10 million.

Solving the coverage conundrum

Having acquired spectrum in auctions in Germany, 1&1 now has to build 1,000 5G sites by the end of 2022 and reach 25% population coverage by 2025 and then 50% population coverage by 2030. “We are very confident that we will reach those coverage obligations even faster,” Martin said. In areas where 1&1 doesn’t have coverage, customers will be able to make use of Telefónica’s network through a national roaming agreement.

Will other operators follow suit?

As a greenfield operator, 1&1 has the advantage of building a network from scratch. But Martin encouraged brownfield operators with existing networks to also roll out Open RAN technologies. “One thing is clear…the networks that don’t change, there will be a forced change in the future,” he warned. “I am rather feeling more secure to be on the front-runner side, instead of (on) the following side.”

The industry increasingly regards Open RAN as a necessity, Amin added. “In the last six months in the industry, we all have seen a tremendous mindset shift across the board. We are stronger if the entire ecosystem believes in the same values of bringing an agile, software-driven connectivity platform,” he noted. “Get out of the lab. I think we have done enough lab testing… This technology works, it works really well… there are huge opportunities here.”

https://rakuten.today/blog/germany-will-harness-advanced-connectivity-honed-in-japan.html

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Und Altiostar werkelt - von vielen übersehen - auch schon bei Dish

Dish adds Rakuten Symphony to 5G vendor lineup

By Bevin Fletcher Nov 24, 2021

Both Dish Network and Japan’s Rakuten Mobile are proponents of cloud-native virtualized network architecture for their respective greenfield builds. Rakuten Mobile launched a 4G network in Japan in 2020, serving as an early large-scale example. Over the summer parent and e-commerce giant Rakuten Group created Rakuten Symphony as a new unit to package and sell network technologies from the company and its ecosystem of partners, including those in the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP).

On the Operational Support Systems (OSS) side, Rakuten acquired startup Innoeye last year, after deploying the vendor’s software and end-to-end automation process platform to support its 4G/5G cloud in Japan. Innoeye was incorporated into RCP and now Rakuten Symphony.

Dish, meanwhile, already has a long lineup of network vendors, including Cisco, which was announced earlier this month. But it’s decision to work with Rakuten may not come as a surprise.

Dish already said it would use software from Altiostar, a U.S.-based open RAN vendor that Rakuten recently acquired at a value of $1 billion and uses both in its network and as part of Symphony’s network functions offering.

Speaking to FierceWireless at MWC Los Angeles in October, Thierry Maupile, EVP at Altiostar, said that when Altiostar became part of Symphony it brought along customers including Dish.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/dish-adds-rakuten-symphony…

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Dish Network as systems integrator; will use Rakuten Symphony’s observability framework in its 5G network

Posted on November 23, 2021 by Alan Weissberger

Rakuten Symphony – a new, independent division of the Japanese Internet company Rakuten developed specifically to sell open RAN technologies globally – joins a growing list of Dish 5G vendors that seems to expand almost every week.

“We had gotten a lot of inquiries about the applicability of this approach to the U.S. market. So, we decided to expand in the U.S. I have formally started a few weeks ago,” Azita Arvani, GM of Rakuten Mobile Americas, told Light Reading in early 2020. The interest is mutual as Dish chairman Charlie Ergen said in February, “Rakuten is important in the sense that we’ve learned a lot from them.”

Recently, Dish said it would use Cisco for routing, IBM for automation, Spirent for testing and Equinix for interconnections – announcements noteworthy considering Dish is mere weeks from its first market launch. The ability to automatically, virtually and in parallel test new 5G Standalone services, slices and software updates in the cloud is key to Dish Network’s network strategy and its differentiation, according to Marc Rouanne, Dish EVP and chief network officer for its wireless business. Rouanne said that the ability to rapidly test and certify network software and services has been part of Dish’s vision for its network.

Dish announced more than a year ago that it would use radio management software from both Mavenir and Altiostar, when Rakuten was a major investor in Altiostar [Note 1.]

Note 1. Rakuten purchased Altiostar outright in August 2021 in a deal worth more than $1 billion. Rakuten’s purchase of Altiostar is part of the company’s broader effort to leverage its Japanese mobile network into a global business selling software, hardware and services to other network operators. The offering was initially dubbed Rakuten Mobile Platform (RMP), and then Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP), but the company in August named it Symphony and said the operation targeted an addressable market of up to $100 billion.

https://techblog.comsoc.org/2021/11/23/dish-network-as-syste…

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Rakuten, Sequoia, and more pour $5.4m into traveltech firm

Deepti Sri · 11 Oct 2021

Airalo, a US-based traveltech startup, raised US$5.4 million in its latest round of funding.
More funding details

• Lead investor: Rakuten Ventures

• Returning investors: Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Antler, Singtel Innov8, Wayra (Telefonica), LG Technology Ventures, Go Ventures, Ground Control, Plug and Play, and I2BF

• Stage: Series A

More company updates

• Airalo will use the new funds to expand the coverage of its global embedded SIM (eSIM) cards, grow its in-app services, and improve its user experience.

• The company aims to bring instant connectivity to users by allowing travelers to buy virtual eSIM packages. Users can download the firm’s plan directly onto their phones without having to swap their existing SIM cards.

• Airalo said it has increased the number of daily users on its platform by 15x since October 2019. It is also looking to establish partnerships in the telecom and travel industry.

• The traveltech firm previously secured US$1.9 million in seed funding from Sequoia Capital India’s scale-up program Surge, and Antler.

https://www.techinasia.com/rakuten-antler-sequoia-singtel-in…

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zu 7178: Dish taps Rakuten Symphony for network assurance, observability

November 24, 2021

Dish Network adds the Rakuten Symphony to its Vendor for Operational Support Systems (OSS) list and addresses the company and its observable framework (OBF) to collect telemetry data from all of Dish’s network features, which Dish says will enable the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to operate and optimize Dish’s 5G network.

Dish said the Rakuten Symphony’s OBF “will bring even greater visibility into the performance and operation of the network’s cloud-native features with near-real-time results.” In addition to visibility, the data collected by OBF will then be used to optimize the network through closed-loop automation, the network operator added.

Launched in August, Rakuten Symphony targets the international telecommunications market with all of Rakuten’s products, services and solutions, including the Rakuten Communications Platform (RCP) and Open RAN software. The business group has acquired Altiostar and is working with the new German market participant 1 & 1 Drillisch to build Europe’s first fully virtualized, Open RAN mobile network.

Among these tools and services are service security solutions developed based on Rakuten’s experience in the Japanese market. Rakuten Symphony CEO Tareq Amin has described Japanese consumers as “quality-obsessed” and shared anecdotal stories about customers experiencing a missed call or otherwise suboptimal networking experience by sharing their stories far and wide on social media. This led to the development of new service security tools, ranging from generalized customer experience measurements to drilling to “accurate empirical data” at an individual subscriber level.

https://macprotricks.com/dish-taps-rakuten-symphony-for-netw…

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DISH Selects Rakuten Symphony for Observability and Service Assurance Solution

LITTLETON, Colo. and TOKYO, Nov. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) selected Rakuten Symphony's observability framework (OBF) to collect telemetry data from all network functions that will enable the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to operate and optimize the DISH 5G network.

DISH is adding Rakuten Symphony to its roster of modern telco infrastructure vendors that support OpenRAN and cloud-native technologies as a provider of Operational Support Systems (OSS) services. Together, DISH's roster of OSS vendors will aggregate service assurance, monitoring, customer experience and automation through a singular platform on the DISH 5G network.

The OBF will bring even greater visibility into the performance and operations of the network's cloud-native functions with near real-time results. This collected data will be used to optimize networks through its Closed Loop Automation module, which executes procedures to provide automatic scaling and healing while minimizing manual work and reducing errors.

The agreement strengthens the operability of DISH's cloud-native, OpenRAN 5G network and lays the foundation for further collaboration in advancing OpenRAN and cloud-native network technologies.

https://www.finanzen.net/nachricht/aktien/dish-selects-rakut…

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A New Era of Cost Savings for Telecoms

The investment implications for alternative RAN are significant. New technology could save on capital expenditures and boost free cash flow by allowing for lower cost through increased competition and easier innovation. There is also greater scope for network sharing due to standardized and 'open' equipment. One greenfield company estimates that a cost-effective 5G deployment could save around 40% on capex and 30% on operating expenses.

However, real savings won't happen until there is a more established ecosystem. With 5G network rollouts well underway in Europe, the pace of Open RAN adoption is likely to be too slow to materially lower 5G capex costs near term, however the market could see notable Open RAN presence by 2025.

https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/telecoms-capex-open-ran-…