Rakuten Mobile CTO Tareq Amin has revealed that his company plans to launch a fixed wireless access (FWA) service in Japan in December, on the proviso that it can secure the relevant CPE devices in time. Noting that the firm is experiencing some constraints in its supply chain in this area, Amin nonetheless predicts that FWA will be available from that date using both sub-6GHz and mmWave spectrum.
The official also confirmed that Rakuten Mobile aims to accelerate 5G deployments across Japan having recently hit the target of covering 97% of the population with its 4G LTE network by end-March 2022. The new fourth operator had deployed more than 44,000 4G base stations by April, he said, while indoor coverage has also expanded as the number of compact antennas for indoor use nationwide reached 40,000 units as of 31 March 2022.
Rakuten Mobile also reported that the total number of subscriptions for the MNO and MVNO services surpassed 5.68 million as of the end of Q1 2022 as mobile segment revenues surged 44% year-on-year to JPY80.4 billion (USD622 million). However, it also recorded losses of JPY135 billion in the January-March quarter largely due to its ongoing network deployment costs. ‘Mobile segment profitability is expected to improve as planned from Q2 2022 onwards,’ the company noted.
