The throughput of the remote radio head is 1.7Gbps and the weight is less than 22 Kg
According to a report from Light Reading, Japan’s Rakuten Mobile CEO Tareq Amin said in a recent conference call with European reporters that the company is about to launch the “world’s first” 5G Massive MIMO remote radio head (RRH).
According to reports, this RRH uses a 32T/32R configuration, which is “fully compatible” with the open interface specification formulated by the O-RAN Alliance. This new RRH can support 100MHz broadband channels, provide up to 1.7Gbps throughput, and supports beamforming. It is worth noting that this device weighs less than 22 kg .
This new RRH device was jointly created by Intel and NEC and will be the core of what Tareq Amin calls “component supplier strategy.” Compared with traditional mobile network deployment, this will significantly reduce Rakuten Mobile’s Open RAN capital expenditure.
Image source: Bloomberg.
Goodbye middleman
In the words of the CTO, Rakuten Mobile avoided the “incredible increase in hardware prices” by not resorting to so-called “middlemen” (Tareq Amin seems to imply “traditional OEMs”).
In Rakuten Mobile’s 4G network deployment, 4T/4R RRH provided by “traditional OEM” Nokia was used. This is Nokia’s first large-scale Open RAN deployment. According to Tareq Amin, this reduces capital expenditures by 35% compared to traditional LTE deployments.
“The cost of our MIMO 32T32R equipment is exactly 50% of the traditional OEM infrastructure.” Tareq Amin said excitedly. “Frankly speaking, in terms of millimeter wave equipment, I think its price is even more than 60% cheaper.”
He pointed out that what will help the further development of 5G services is the “affordable” Qualcomm modem used in mobile terminals, which is now used in Rakuten Mobile’s 5G base station infrastructure. Qualcomm also provides the base station RF front end, supports 128 antenna arrays and analog beamforming.
Rakuten Mobile has 3.7GHz and 28GHz millimeter wave spectrum resources for 5G services. After a period of delay (due to the new crown epidemic), the company will launch 5G services in the last week of September or the first week of October.
Tareq Amin did not disclose the price of the RRH mentioned above, but the TIP project initiated by Facebook seems to be a bit behind what Rakuten is doing – either in terms of price or in terms of functionality.
TIP’s OpenRAN project plans to introduce RRHs with a price of less than US$1,000 to the market in the first quarter of next year, but this is a traditional 4T/4R configuration RRH.
In a recent webinar hosted by Light Reading, Santiago Tenorio, head of Vodafone’s network strategy and architecture and chairman of TIP, pointed out that Massive MIMO is a “difficult task.”
We don’t want to be a system integrator, but we have to
If you want to become a software company that impresses Tareq Amin, there is one thing you can’t say, and that is the “vertical stack”.
On the eve of Rakuten Mobile’s commercial service launch in early April, Tareq Amin talked about the huge challenge of how to persuade many vendors to deploy virtual machines on common cloud infrastructure.
“Most of them will come to me and say,’Tareq, we just want to give you a vertical stack.’ I will say, this won’t work. If you want to give me a vertical stack, then we can’t cooperate. You need to integrate To my level cloud.”
Considering these difficulties, Tareq Amin has long concluded that if Rakuten Mobile is to succeed, it needs to become a system integrator. “We must be the glue between all these suppliers,” he said.
He said that he chose Altiostar, the American software company, not because of any RFP, but because “I respect the possibility of what they can do”, even though they still have a “huge gap.”
Japan first, then the world
Although Tareq Amin does not want Rakuten Mobile to be called a system integrator, he prefers the term “platform provider”, but the experience of the system integrator allows the company to package its network construction experience in Japan for the past three years as Tareq Amin Said “pod” can be used as a reference template for other operators, enabling them to start and run Open RAN and virtualized core networks faster.
Tareq Amin said: “We are very willing to cooperate with other companies and are open to these partnerships, hoping to make this platform better than it is now through cooperation.”
Rakuten Mobile will announce some partnerships with European operators on September 14.
For more such interesting article like this, app/softwares, games, Gadget Reviews, comparisons, troubleshooting guides, listicles, and tips & tricks related to Windows, Android, iOS, and macOS, follow us on Google News, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest.