Cisco says deploying fully-automated 5G network for Rakuten

SAN DIEGO: The US-based Cisco Systems said that it has partnered with a Japanese e-commerce company to deploy end-to-end cloud-based fifth-generation or 5G network in Japan. Rakuten’s commercial 5G launch is expected by mid-2020.

“We are committed to innovating the customer experience, and with Rakuten, we have deployed fully automated and virtualised 5G network,” Maria Martinez, Chief Customer Care Officer at Cisco Systems said.

Rakuten has been deploying a greenfield 5G mobile network and has earlier implemented network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) with 4,000 edge nodes from the networking major.