In Conversation with
Sharad Sriwastawa,
Co-CEO of
Rakuten Mobile
Sharad Sriwastawa joined Rakuten Mobile in 2018 and was appointed as co-CEO in 2023. He is a recognized industry thought leader and telecommunications innovator, having played a defining role in the global adoption of cloud-native Open RAN infrastructure, revolutionizing mobile networks worldwide.
Sharad has been making waves in the telecom industry for close to three decades, working with some of the biggest mobile operators, network providers, and consultancy firms. Most notably, he was one of the pioneers behind the rollout of India’s largest mobile network, Reliance Jio Telecom.
In August 2023, Rakuten Group Chairman and CEO Mickey Mikitani offered Sharad the opportunity to take on the role of co-CEO of Rakuten Mobile to lead the company in its journey to becoming Japan’s leading wireless operator.
At the same time, Sharad also stepped into the role of President for Rakuten Symphony, a company launched in 2022 to spearhead the global adoption of cloud-native open RAN infrastructure and services by mobile network operators, enterprises and government bodies.
Sharad sees massive change in the future of telecom and connectivity through the deployment of AI tools on both the network operations and customer engagement sides. We caught up with Sharad to discuss his journey at Rakuten and his vision for the company moving forward.
What attracted you to Rakuten Mobile when you first joined?
“Building Jio’s network was a defining moment in my career. In 2018, Rakuten set the ambitious goal of building Japan’s newest mobile network, with the aim of disrupting the telecom industry. When the call came from Mickey Mikitani, Rakuten Group founder and CEO, joining such an exciting project was a natural next step for me.”
How was your experience stepping into the co-CEO role? What are you focused on now?
“It's been a quite a journey for me since being appointed as co-CEO of Rakuten Mobile. There is a great sense of achievement when you see how people are using and enjoying a mobile network we have built. We crossed the 8.5 million subscriber mark in February 2025*1, achieving this in less than 5 years of operations. This is a significant achievement and is testament to the hard work of the team, but we have big ambitions at Rakuten, and we will not stop here.”
“Our focus is now on taking the company into its next phase of optimized operations and growth. We are developing new initiatives to drive customer growth and provide the best customer experience for wireless users in Japan.”
What impact did Rakuten Mobile have for the Japanese telecom market?
“For us, mobile connectivity is a basic human right. The Japan mobile market has always been expensive for connectivity services compared to other global markets. Depending on data consumption, mobile users used to pay upwards of US$77 for basic connectivity services and limited data.”
“Since the launch of Rakuten Mobile at around US$25 per month, with unlimited data, the cost for wireless connectivity services in Japan has significantly come down.”
How does Rakuten Mobile ensure a high level of service availability and customer experience?
“Rakuten Mobile is now recognized by Opensignal as a global leader in upload speed*2. We’ve accomplished this by not compromising on customer experience. We have continued to implement new features developed by Rakuten Symphony to provide strong coverage to customers on our own Open RAN network.”
“We are now expanding our platinum band 700MHz deployment to ensure better connectivity in densely populated areas, and in the future, we will offer network access through satellite connectivity, in partnership with AST SpaceMobile.”
How do you see Rakuten Mobile utilizing AI to optimize network operations?
“There is so much industry chatter around digital transformation and how it will enable the promise of AI in the telecom industry. For AI to be successfully deployed in telecom, all data, whether it be network data, geolocation data, needs to be unified and centralized at a single point.”
“At Rakuten Mobile we have made AI and automation our priorities from the beginning. We are now operating the network based on years of automation experience, putting us lightyears ahead of other mobile operators from an operational cost perspective. We are now integrating generative AI into network operations to enable network engineers and managers to have visibility across the entire network at any time, right from their phone.”
“We have also created innovative tools for our mobile shop operations team to manage existing shops more efficiently, and predict the best locations for new shops in Japan. The list goes on and the potential applications for AI at Rakuten Mobile are huge.”
What are some of the more innovative connectivity services Rakuten Mobile is providing to customers?
“AI is key, and people will become more open to adopting the services it can offer over time, driving customer engagement. Rakuten’s ecosystem of more than 70 internet services provides us with ample opportunity to develop new and innovative services that will enhance the overall customer experience.”
“At Rakuten Mobile, we have built a rich communication app, Rakuten Link. This app provides instant access to all connected Rakuten internet services, whether that is day-to-day banking, digital payments, travel or shopping. That is a huge benefit for our ecosystem, made possible by everyday activities being accessible through a single app.”
“We also see the integration of AI into Rakuten Link as the next evolution where we can automate a customer’s entire day-to-day journey without any interruption.”
What is your vision for Rakuten Mobile as co-CEO?
“For Rakuten Mobile we want to be the number one wireless provider in Japan. In the years to come we will be working towards full network automation, which is zero touch, zero trust, zero intervention operations for a secure and optimized network – this is the beauty of Open RAN and Cloudification.”
“The industry is now seeing an accelerated rate of adoption of Open RAN, and Rakuten is leading the way driving this growing trend. Building the world’s first virtualized Open RAN in a vendor agnostic environment was a challenge, but Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony are now able to provide network operators and network vendors with all the tools they need to plan, build, deploy and operate a world-class network. We are all excited to continue this journey.”
*1 The 8.5 million subscribers number includes Rakuten Saikyo Plan, Rakuten Saikyo Plan Business, Rakuten Turbo, MVNO and MVNE service subscribers as of February 27, 2025. The number of subscribers in this press release includes BCP customers. (BCP is the B2B pricing plan for Business Continuity Plan purposes.) The total number of subscribers, excluding BCP lines, for MNO and MVNE combined is 8.28 million. The number of MNO subscribers (excluding BCP, MVNO and MVNE) is 7.62 million.
*2 Details of the Opensignal Global Reports, published in Februrary 2024, can be found here: https://www.opensignal.com/reports/2024/02/global-mobile-network-experience-awards
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