The wavelength-routing technology enables the operator scale up bandwidth for rapid rollout of 4G and 5G services.
The mobile network will be built on a nationwide optical infrastructure covering the 47 prefectures throughout Japan for backhaul and interconnecting data centres.
Nokia said the deployment is world’s first fully reconfigurable photonic mesh mobile backhaul network. The backbone network will be optimized for maximum capacity and lowest cost per bit with Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine (PSE-3) coherent digital signal processor and C+L Ultra-Wideband wavelength routing.
The vendor said its platforms are engineered for the space and power constraints of mobile backhaul and edge computing networks, making them suitable for transport at Rakuten Mobile’s planned edge data centres.
Established partnership
Nokia and Rakuten Mobile are already working together to implement a fully automated operations environment for 5G, and the vendor will the virtualised core network to manage total cost of ownership.
Tareq Amin, CTO, Rakuten Mobile, said, “Rakuten Mobile is creating the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network, delivering unprecedented network agility and disruptive economics to end users.
“Nokia’s Photonic Service Engine 3 coherent chipset and integrated ROADM technology enables us to achieve unprecedented levels of integration and performance building the mobile network for 4G and 5G.”