Rakuten Symphony

Rakuten Symphony is a telecommunications company that has disrupted the industry by reimagining telecom for the hyperscale era. It offers a cloud-native, open interface platform that enables the rapid deployment and operation of advanced mobile services at a fraction of the time and cost compared to conventional approaches, without compromising network quality or security.

Rakuten Symphony was spun off from Rakuten Mobile, the mobile network operator division of Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten Group, in August 2021. Rakuten Mobile had successfully deployed the world's first fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network in Japan in 2019, leveraging open interfaces and disaggregated radio access network (RAN) technologies. This groundbreaking deployment laid the foundation for Rakuten Symphony's innovative offerings.

At the core of Rakuten Symphony's strategy are four pillars: disaggregated RAN, unified cloud, massive automation, and a platform-based organization. By disaggregating the RAN and aligning it with a unified cloud infrastructure running on commodity IT hardware, Rakuten Symphony can significantly reduce costs while enabling greater flexibility and scalability. Extensive automation capabilities, with aspirations of achieving Level four autonomous network operations, further enhance efficiency and agility.

A key offering from Rakuten Symphony is Symworld, a cloud-based platform that serves as an app store for telecom network software and applications. It allows operators to purchase and deploy network functions, operations tools, and other components through a subscription model, streamlining the procurement and deployment process. Complementing this is Symware, an appliance that enables Radio-as-a-Service, delivering RAN capabilities through a cloud-native, containerized solution.

In March 2022, Rakuten Symphony acquired Robin.io, a Silicon Valley-based cloud technology startup, to bolster its multi-cloud mobility, automation, and orchestration capabilities. With Robin.io's expertise in Kubernetes-based containerization and lifecycle management of cloud-native applications, Rakuten Symphony aims to offer a highly integrated and efficient cloud platform for mobile operators.

Key customers and partnerships

Rakuten Symphony's flagship customer is 1&1 Drillisch, a German telecommunications company that has entrusted Rakuten with the responsibility of building its entire mobile network. This comprehensive deal, announced in 2021, showcases Rakuten Symphony's end-to-end capabilities in deploying a greenfield, cloud-native mobile network.