Rakuten Mobile Using AirMap’s TowerSight Solution to Inspect Base Station Sites with Drones as it Rolls Out New Network
April 6, 2020, Santa Monica, CA—AirMap, the leading digital airspace and automation company serving the drone economy, today announced that it is providing its TowerSight solution to Rakuten Mobile, Inc., a division of the Japanese internet services company Rakuten. Rakuten Mobile is using TowerSight to conduct drone inspections of its base station sites as it rolls out the world’s first fully virtualized mobile network. Rakuten Mobile’s implementation of TowerSight is an initiative of Rakuten AirMap Inc, a joint venture between Rakuten, Inc. and AirMap.
Rakuten Mobile will launch full service with its network in April 2020 and is building base stations nationwide to expand its network coverage. Each base station site must be inspected after installation to validate compliance. Rakuten Mobile previously conducted these inspections manually. Now, with TowerSight, Rakuten Mobile is using drones to survey its tower portfolio, streamline its inspection workflow, and verify proper installation of new base stations. TowerSight provides a central repository where Rakuten Mobile can manage its base station site data, glean business insights, and share information across teams.
“TowerSight makes it easy for the Rakuten Mobile team to conduct site inspections safely and efficiently as we build out our next-generation mobile network,” said Tareq Amin, Representative Director, Executive Vice President, and CTO at Rakuten Mobile.
“Rakuten Mobile’s unprecedented use of drones shows how UAS are critical enablers of 5G rollout,” added André de Verteuil, AirMap’s Vice President of Field Engineering. “AirMap is proud to supply Rakuten Mobile with TowerSight, which is a powerful tool for automating tower inspections and gaining valuable business insights that inform asset management.”
With TowerSight, tower companies and MNOs can use off-the-shelf drones to autonomously survey their infrastructure. TowerSight includes tools and features that enable users to request tower inspections, coordinate and dispatch missions, autonomously inspect sites, upload drone data, and automatically process imagery to deliver key insights across teams.
Enterprises can use TowerSight’s high-precision flight planning, automated capture, inspection scheduling, and intelligent data processing workflows to evolve their tower intelligence. TowerSight is customizable, allowing enterprises to perform automated tower flights that generate consistent data across a portfolio, or to conduct more advanced missions that create highly accurate 3D digital twins. TowerSight incorporates machine learning to identify rust and inventory and uses artificial intelligence to generate as-built reports. Capturing a true picture of tower capacity and status gives towercos and MNOs the opportunity to maximize revenue potential across their portfolios and remain competitive.
To learn more about how you can use TowerSight to gain portfolio-wide tower intelligence, request a demo at airmap.com/towersight/ or contact [email protected].
About AirMap
AirMap is the leading digital airspace and automation company serving the drone economy. AirMap connects airspace authorities, enterprise operators, and industry developers with automation software solutions for scaling safe and efficient drone operations in low-altitude airspace. AirMap’s UTM and U-space products are deployed in the Czech Republic, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, the United States, and available in over 30 countries. The company serves a global community of over 250,000 users and 2,700 registered developers. In 2019, AirMap acquired Hangar Technology, an enterprise drone dataflow platform, to further accelerate enterprise drone adoption through digital automation. AirMap is committed to advancing drone enablement through global research initiatives including NASA-UTM, the European Network of U-space Demonstrators, and the U.S. DoT UAS Integration Pilot Program and UTM Pilot Program. Learn more at www.airmap.com.
About Rakuten Mobile
Rakuten Mobile, Inc. is a Rakuten Group company responsible for mobile communications, including mobile network operator (MNO) and mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) businesses, as well as ICT and energy. Through continuous innovation and the deployment of advanced technology, Rakuten Mobile aims to redefine expectations in the mobile communications industry in order to provide appealing and convenient services that respond to diverse customer needs.
