Robin.io and AirHop form strategic partnership

By working in close strategic partnership, Robin and AirHop enable the expedited deployment of cloud-native Open RAN in an operationally optimized solution. The AirHop and Robin partnership significantly reduces the development time for systems integrators, MNOs and CSPs by enabling a smooth path to integration and orchestration of self-optimizing Open RAN solutions, which greatly eases the cost and operational effort needed for productization. Robin and AirHop technologies are key enablers for Rakuten Mobile’s 4G/5G network in Japan as well as the Rakuten Communication Platform (RCP) delivering virtualization, standardization, optimization and automation of 5G Open RAN, leading to more cost efficiency, innovation and affordability.

Robin.io core technologies—Multi Cluster Automation Platform (MDCAP), Cloud Native Platform (CNP), and Cloud Native Storage (CNS)—will provide a cloud native infrastructure for onboarding network functions. The technologies also will deliver hyper-automation that orchestrates and manages the lifecycles of bare-metal infrastructures, third-party appliances, Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), Cloud-native Network Functions (CNFs) and services. They deliver these capabilities with built-in logging, monitoring and policy engines, for closed loop automation, managed through a single pane of glass. Robin solutions provide intuitive and declarative interfaces that auto-discover and auto-configure resources for the service’s entire life-cycle, reducing deployment complexity, time-lines and human error.

AirHop provides a suite of real-time network intelligence solutions delivering Radio Access Network (RAN) automation and performance optimization for coverage and capacity, network configuration, mobility optimization and network operations. AirHop’s eSON solution is commercially hardened with large-scale deployments at Reliance Jio and Rakuten Mobile. eSON provides MNOs with deployment flexibility supporting optimization applications for disaggregated vRAN architectures as a pre-standard, near-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) platform and as xApps/rApps on emerging near real-time and non-real-time RIC platforms based on O-RAN standards. eSON applications optimize performance across Rakuten Mobile’s end-to-end cloud native wireless network for macro cell, small cell and HetNet coverage use cases delivering improved spectral efficiency of the network, resulting in higher throughput and more capacity, reduced operational expenses through automated configuration and issue resolution, and dynamic balancing of user traffic across the network. eSON360 provides AI/ML based rApps across a broad spectrum of target RAN optimization use cases.

“We are pleased to be partnering with Robin on this autonomous network journey,” noted Yan Hui, CEO of AirHop. “AirHop real-time RAN optimization and Robin.io hyper-automation are driving both horizontal and vertical automation in Rakuten Mobile’s industry leading RCP resulting in operational cost reductions, deployment acceleration and improved performance of Open RAN.”

“Working together, Robin and Airhop are delivering a platform that telecom operators can successfully deploy across the entire 5G stack on cloud-native infrastructure at scale, including near real-time network automation and performance optimization reducing deployment and operations cost,” said Partha Seetela, CEO and CTO of Robin.io. “The solution enables operators to successfully manage their network functions across thousands of sites and delivers improved spectral efficiency of the network, resulting in higher throughput and more capacity. Today’s announcement reinforces the importance of our Robin partner ecosystem that includes best-of-breed hardware and software technology vendors essential to accelerate the time to value for our telco customers."