Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Thursday, February 18, 2021

NEC Argentina CEO, Tomohiro Nomura

"We must start adjusting networks with Open RAN from now on, before reaching 5G"

The Japanese company NEC is actively participating in the pioneering case of Open RAN in a deployment of national operator, Rakuten, in its home country, and the experience serves as a sample for its subsidiaries around the world.

In 2019, Rakuten installed a multi-vendor RAN, with equipment from Airspan, Altiostar, Mavenir and Nokia, among others, for LTE, and in 2020 it developed its network towards a 5G NR, with NEC radios. Following this milestone of having jointly developed a fully virtualized and native Cloud mobile network, the Japanese firm announced an agreement by which they will develop a Stand Alone network platform and sell it to third parties. Beyond the sound footprint on Open RAN - which already unbalances the status quo of traditional network providers by its own conception - this movement is disruptive because it places Rakuten in a new position in the industry, as a telco and a vendor at the same time, from the hand of its partner NEC.

In Argentina, NEC's presence dates back to 1978. Currently there are three offices –in Capital Federal, San Juan and San Luis- and 180 employees, led by CEO Tomohiro Nomura. More than 60% of its business in the country is concentrated in video surveillance and Smart Cities –or as the company calls it, “the business of safer cities” -. The rest correspond to operators. That is why the challenge for the coming years will be to transfer that experience in Japan to other markets, in order to make a place among providers of mobile operators in the transition to the next generation of technology. “We are focusing on 5G and our specialty is Open RAN. It has better compatibility with existing systems,” Nomura said in a talk with Convergencialatina.

Convergencialatina: Can you tell me about your expectations of being part of the 5G market in Argentina in the coming years?

Tomohiro Nomura: The country still lacks definitions of the rules of the game for 5G, such as the allocation of frequencies for public and private use. There are also no definitions regarding the business model. With Open RAN we can adjust from now on. Although these implementations do not yet exist in Argentina, in Japan we have advanced and are promoting them in other countries.

We are monitoring the situation locally. We know that in regulatory matters we cannot have an influence, but we can have it in technology adoption. We want to get involved in operators' Open RAN experiences before 5G. That is why we have started talking to explain to each provider what happens in the next technological generation. We want to be a candidate for them, but the definitions are still premature.

Convergencialatina: How disruptive do you think Open RAN can be for current network architecture models?

Tomohiro Nomura: It focuses on software solutions. Compared to existing systems, based on a combination of hardware and software, Open RAN proposes more software and less hardware. That is the big difference. Now, when one needs a modification on the network, will not have to change any hardware. In addition, the software management adds security.

That is why we want to focus our work with each operator in Open RAN, on how they can adopt it according to the situation of each one. The main advantage is that it requires less investment for providers (Rakuten maintains that the Open RAN implementation costs 40% less than a traditional infrastructure).

Convergencialatina: Can you tell me about the investment panorama in the country and in the sector for 2021, after a year marked by Covid-19 and the economic crisis?

Tomohiro Nomura: We come from a very special 2020 in terms of investments, although there were opportunities to improve connectivity. New investments were slow. 2020 was taken as a year of adjustments for the new normal, and certain items that had been planned for 2020 were moved to 2021. In other words, there was a shift in the timing of the investment.

Convergencialatina: Tell me about the performance of the Smart Cities segment, key to NEC's local business?

Tomohiro Nomura: With the Covid-19 pandemic came the need for new applications linked to Smart Cities. In our case, we promote the “CitySenseAI” platform, capable of handling different types of apps, be it parking, environment, lighting. Our specialty is taking data, centralizing it on a platform and managing it for a public body.

What we see today in Smart Cities implementations is that governments advanced with E-Government systems, but each service is separate. Our idea with this platform is to bring them together in the same place. “CitySenseAI” is already used in video surveillance in certain public administrations in Argentina, but the goal is to combine the data with data collected from other services.

This article was published in the 2020 Communications Atlas and Yearbook on Convergencia’s 25th anniversary.

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