Rakuten Mobile made the business decision to change from being a mobile virtual network operator to building and running its own mobile network and redefined the notion of what a mobile network operator is in Japan’s fiercely competitive mobile market, which has a long history of innovation. Rakuten Mobile set out to build the world’s first cloud-native mobile infrastructure, from end to end, that is totally software controlled. The rationale is it will cost about 35% less to run and offer unprecedented levels of flexibility. The lack of critical business, network and operations infrastructure meant investing in a new design to provide customers with an integrated, consistent experience across its digital services portfolio. To this end, Netcracker deployed its end-to-end Digital BSS, based on a single, convergent cloud architecture that leverages TM Forum’s Open APIs. Being able to define and automate personalized customer journeys plays a fundamental role in how Rakuten’s members interact with the services. Netcracker took what it describes as a “blueprint” approach, which relied on out-of-the-box customer journey templates, business processes, functional capabilities, and pre-configured “Sandbox” software to visualize the solution and define key performance indicators for the project.  Rakuten successfully launched its UN-LIMIT plan in April 2020. Now it takes less than 4 weeks – depending on service – from business definition to launch for new services. The fast time to market time enabled Rakuten to launch six new service plans within one year, which is an unheard-of rate for traditional service providers.