A welcome progress report on the buildout of Europe’s most distinctive new mobile network. Squeezing in between TM Forum’s Digital Transformation World last week, and MWC Las Vegas this week, Rakuten’s annual Optimism event might not have received the attention it deserved from the telecom community. But make no mistake: the update on Germany’s 1&1 offered important new insights on Rakuten Symphony’s progress in disrupting telecom beyond its native Japan. In conversation with Symphony CEO Tareq Amin, Chief Revenue Officer Rabih Dabbousi, 1&1 CEO Michael Martin gave new details of 1&1’s progress and thinking on key aspects of its plans. As well as highlighting achievements to date at 1&1, the discussion offered insights into industry-wide concerns including security and energy optimization. Rollout 1&1 will be launching mobile broadband at the end of 2022. In mid-2023 they will have interconnections and partnerships through Telefonica (Germany). The fully cloud-native core network is in place and working. 1&1 is already the largest telco edge cloud network in Europe. The biggest challenge now is the rollout of antenna sites. Although an initial “thousand antennas” target has been delayed until mid-2023, the scalability of the rollout means that 1&1 expects to meet their required coverage […]