Japan's Rakuten Mobile has announced it will launch its mobile operator service on the local market next month. The operator will open applications on 1 October for a “Free Supporter Programe” that will offer voice and data services free of charge. The initial wave of the Free Supporter Program will be open to 5,000 subscribers and will be expanded in waves to include tens of thousands of users to the new network, the company said.
Rakuten Mobile will launch a fully virtualized, cloud-native network. The Free Supporter Programme is expected to be available until 31 March 2020. The Free Supporter Program will conclude by the time of launch of regular subscriptions and, in the case of that launch starting before 31 March 2020, Free Supporter Programme subscribers will be offered the opportunity to continue to provide customer feedback in exchange for compensation equivalent to mobile service communication charges until the end of March.
Customers can join the Free Supporter Programme online through a dedicated page on the Rakuten Mobile website. Applications will be accepted from 1 to 7 October. Customers who have applied for the Free Supporter Programme will receive an email notification about their application after 11 October. If the initial number of applicants exceeds 5,000, a lottery will be held to select the first wave of participants. After registration of contract details, including steps for identity verification, customers will receive by mail a Free Supporter Program SIM card or device of their purchase and said SIM card.
Plans are also in place to open applications for regular user plans online and instore. Starting October, Rakuten Mobile will offer 7 smartphone models and 2 Wi-Fi router models. The lineup includes 2 Galaxy brand models, which will be made available from Rakuten Mobile for the first time. The new devices can be used with either the Free Supporter Programme or the MVNO service. These devices, in addition to all new devices to be sold by Rakuten Mobile from now on, will all be SIM lock free devices.
Rakuten Mobile’s mobile carrier service will be available nationwide from October. The company’s own network service area will cover the 23 wards of Tokyo, Nagoya City, Osaka City and parts of Hyogo prefecture. Rakuten Mobile will offer nationwide LTE services to customers from the time of launch through services based on the roaming agreement with KDDI and Okinawa Cellular, to be provided outside of Tokyo’s 23 wards, Nagoya City and Osaka City and excluding high traffic areas. Information on network availability will be provided on the Rakuten Mobile website starting with 24 September.
