Today, AirHop Communications announced that its selection of xApps for RAN automation and optimization is now accessible on the SymworldTM storefront of Rakuten Symphony. This collaboration aims to make it easier for telecom operators to deploy fully cloud-native Open RAN automation and optimization solutions. It represents the evolution of a long-standing relationship that started in April 2020 with the commercial deployment of AirHop’s RAN optimization applications when Rakuten Mobile launched its commercial network in Japan.
Tareq Amin, CEO of Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony, stated, “AirHop has been an important partner to Rakuten’s journey to drive toward autonomous network operations. We have seen impressive results of AirHop’s pioneering solutions in our own network at Rakuten Mobile in Japan, and now look forward to leveraging the same benefits for other Communication Service Providers (CSPs) looking to modernize their networks with Open RAN. With Symworld™ marketplace enabling emerging network functions to be available simply as platform applications, we are excited to have AirHop’s Open RAN optimization xApps on Symworld™ marketplace.”
Yan Hui, CEO and co-founder of AirHop, said: “Rakuten Symphony’s visionary approach to create the first telecom marketplace for innovative solutions, promises to accelerate the deployment and operation of cloud-native, next generation, open mobile networks. Our deep collaboration with Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony has helped AirHop establish our xApp solution’s robustness and scalability for large commercial deployments. We are thrilled to bring them to the world-wide CSP community through Symworld™ marketplace.”
The cloud-native technology from AirHop supports both pre-O-RAN interfaces used in conventional and Open RAN designs and offers real-time RAN optimization and visualisation. For CSP concerns including setup, coverage, capacity and mobility optimization, energy savings, and anomaly detection, AirHop offers a shared portfolio of Open RAN automation and optimization use cases.
The SymworldTM marketplace by Rakuten Symphony is the first telecom marketplace in the world created to meet the demands of CSPs and is developing a marketplace of Rakuten and third-party applications to enable the quick acquisition and delivery of telco services as 5G rollouts progress. To make authorised telecom apps broadly accessible to all SymworldTM clients and to streamline the telecom application onboarding process, SymworldTM was developed. The SymworldTM platform digitalizes all telecom planning, deployment, security, and monitoring procedures in real-world telecom networks and enables one-click deployment of SymworldTM marketplace apps.
