Rakuten-NEC, First Shipment of 5G Base Station RU Equipment
Equipped with mMIMO antenna of 3.7GHz band
5G service commercialization plan from June


Even though the Tokyo Olympics have been postponed by a year, commercialization of 5G services in Japan is expected to take place around June.

Rakuten Mobile and NEC Corporation announced on the 24th that they have shipped the first 5G radio unit (RU) jointly developed by the two companies.

“The 5G RU will play a critical role in Rakuten Mobile’s fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network,” said Tareq Amin, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Rakuten Mobile. “In addition to shipping the 5G RU, Rakuten Mobile and NEC will also begin construction of 5G base stations.”

The newly produced 5G RU features a 3.7GHz band massive multiple input multiple output (mMIMO) antenna in a small, lightweight, and low-power form factor.

Rakuten Mobile will begin expanding its 5G network by constructing base stations in the Tokyo area with 5G RU, and plans to commercialize 5G services in June.
> Meanwhile, Rakuten Mobile, Japan's fourth largest mobile carrier, is building an end-to-end fully virtualized cloud native network in Japan, and implemented the world's first open, virtualized, distributed radio access network (OpenRAN) in October last year.