Rakuten’s latest announcement is more important than it seems – and not just for the audience you might expect. In a briefing to press and analysts on Tuesday 15th June, Rakuten Group CTO Tareq Amin provided not so much an update than an upgrade on the company’s ambitions for telecom. Image courtesy of Rakuten Rakuten does not just want to prove than a mobile network can be built and operated at scale using open principles (it was never only just that). It does not just want to show that the platform that it has built – RCP – can be deployed by other operators (ONAP, are you listening?). It wants to “challenge the whole telco industry” – in this latest briefing, by providing total transparency on the costs of purchasing mobile network infrastructure. Rakuten’s mission is to be a business that creates value by making it easy to procure a low-cost, ultra-reliable, connectivity platform. We think this is the subtle but essential point about Rakuten’s goal. Yes, the technology has to work (check!). Yes it has to work at scale (check!). But eliminating the obstacles to making a purchase is a lesson straight out of the webscale e-commerce playbook. And […]