Targeting early launch of commercial service with superior network quality
Tokyo, April 30, 2024 – Rakuten Mobile, Japan’s newest and most modern mobile network, today began radio frequency testing for its 700 MHz spectrum, also known as the “platinum band”*1, allocated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.
Rakuten Mobile is preparing to launch base station operations using the 700 MHz band, drawing on its expertise gained building Japan’s first fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network based on Open RAN standards in the 1.7GHz band. After completing radio frequency testing, the company is aiming for the early roll out of commercial service using the 700 MHz platinum band.
Since the full-scale launch of its mobile carrier service in April 2020, Rakuten Mobile has continued to enhance network quality and coverage through the build-out of 4G and 5G base stations in addition to roaming agreements with its roaming partner. On top of achieving population ratio coverage of 99.9%*2, the company has consistently been recognized by independent research organizations like Opensignal, a global provider of network experience and market performance insights, who named Rakuten Mobile a leader among Japan’s mobile operators in five network performance categories*3.
