Rakuten Symphony joined the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), supporting the software company’s mission to deliver high-quality connectivity with faster times to market at lower cost.

Vivek Murthy, president of OSS at Rakuten Symphony, explained the company is excited to join TIP as the group and its board recommit to goals it also is pursuing, namely delivering better connectivity at lower costs with a broader ecosystem of suppliers than what is available today.

He added it will first engage with TIP in three areas: data observability, data management and service assurance. “The more we can align between existing and new best practices, the less the friction of change and solution fragmentation that appears later.”

TIP executive director Kristian Toivo added Rakuten Mobile is a pioneering telecoms operator in Japan, and Rakuten Symphony “brings that deep expertise with proven solutions to the telecoms landscape”.

With experience in data-driven, cloud-native and AI-first systems, Toivo noted Rakuten Symphony will strengthen TIP’s collaborative efforts to accelerate innovation, validate new technologies and drive commercial readiness.

Rakuten Symphony was set up to export Rakuten Mobile’s software-based model to markets outside Japan.

Rakuten Mobile joined TIP in November 2019, while rival KDDI became a TIP member in 2020, when it opened the first community lab in Japan.

TIP was founded in 2016 by Facebook, Nokia, Intel, Deutsche Telekom, EE and a number of other mobile operators. It now has more than 180 members.