In this podcast Principal Analyst, Anil Rao discusses network automation with Rahul Atri, Managing Director, Rakuten Mobile Singapore.

(00:00) Anil introduces us to how the telecoms industry is responding to the challenges and opportunities of automation and Rahul explains why Rakuten made automation a fundamental part of its approach

 

(09:00) vRAN automation use case – how deployment time per site was reduced from 6 days 8.5 minutes

 

(12:00) The foundational principles of extreme automation at Rakuten; with examples of edge data centre deployment automation and more discussion about vRAN

 

(17:00) The current state of automation at Rakuten; successes and challenges

 

(28:00) Rakuten Communications Platform, the layered architecture, infrastructure, orchestration engine, observability framework

 

(35:00) Rakuten Communications Platform and industry standards, collaborating with vendor partners to build open solutions and the pitfalls of too many standards. Balancing standards with optimisation, customisation, and innovation

 

(44:00) Making DevOps, continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) work with partners

 

(48:00) Riding the Open-source wave

 

(54.00) OpenRAN and remote interface control (RIC)

 

(57:42) Machine learning and artificial intelligence; use case examples including self-healing automation

 

(01:06:00) What to expect in 2021

 

(01:10:00) Recommendations to communications service providers and vendor partners