Last updated: 2023年2月20日 at 11:01 PM
Rakuten Mobile's base station was installed on the roof of my home apartment in Hiratsuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture, and opened on April 1.
As already reported in the following blog, "Rakuten Mobile's plan to implement base station installation work" (5-year contract) was adopted at the 37th extraordinary general meeting of this condominium held on Friday, January 22 this year, and monthly site usage fee (rent) and electricity usage fee will be paid to the management association from Rakuten Mobile Co., Ltd. along with rakuten mobile base station installation. The work will be carried out from 10 March and completed on 18 March.
With this Rakuten mobile base station installation, I replaced the SIM of my smartphone with MNP and Rakuten Mobile SIM in late February. At present, Rakuten Mobile's base stations are undevelosted, and roaming connections to AU lines are available in regional cities other than metropolitan areas such as Tokyo's 23 wards.
We will report the details below on what kind of connection state rakuten mobile's base station is installed on the roof of the home apartment.
Connection status to Rakuten line
As of April 1, 2021, Rakuten Mobile's pricing plan has been automatically upgraded to Rakuten UN-LIMIT VI. The above is the screen of the app "my Rakuten Mobile" and "LTE Line Status Checker".
I expected it, but the radio wave is still weak just by installing it on the rooftop, and the use in the room will inevitably be a roaming connection to the AU line.
In order to forcibly connect to rakuten line with a smartphone other than the terminal purchased from Rakuten, it seems that the only way is to move the smartphone to the window and restart the terminal or manually connect to rakuten mobile line.
In the current situation, rakuten mobile's base stations are still too few. On the other hand, the number of base stations on partner lines (AU) is overwhelmingly large, and it seems that au radio waves (Band 26: 850MHz) will be picked up by all means.
Since au radio waves are platinum band, rakuten line (Band 3: 1.7MHz) is correctly exposed by roaming the weakness that radio waves are absorbed by buildings and radio waves are difficult to reach in the room.
In the future, if more Rakuten Mobile base stations are installed in the surrounding area and the horizontal radio waves are strengthened, I think the connection to rakuten lines will stabilize.
However, it will take a considerable amount of time to negotiate with the management association of condominiums in the surrounding area, conclude contracts, and develop infrastructure, so I do not think that the expansion of the Rakuten area will proceed so easily.
Rakuten Mobile's new plan "Rakuten UN-LIMIT VI" is one selling point that you can use an unlimited amount of data for 3,278 yen (tax included) if you connect to Rakuten line, but I think that it is better not to expect excessive expectations because the connection is unstable for operation in a place where rakuten line area and partner line area (AU line) are mixed.
The following is the LTE line status near the west exit of Hiratsuka Station as of April 1, 2021. The number of base stations of Rakuten line is only 2 stations, while the number of base stations of AU line is 18.
By the way, NTT DOCOMO has 168,800 base stations compatible with Premium 4G and 228,100 base stations that support LTE services as of the end of FISCAL 2019.
By comparison, Rakuten Mobile has only 5,739 base stations as of June 2020. With the aim of establishing 8,652 stations by March 2021, it is expected to achieve a population coverage rate of 70%, but it is completely beyond the reach of other companies that have been developing base stations for decades.
It is said that it will cost nearly 1 trillion yen to develop base stations, and due to financial difficulties, it is expected to invest 242.3 billion yen in base station development through a third-party allotment of capital underwrittens such as Japan Post and Tencent, a major Chinese internet company, but with this level of funds, I feel that it is not enough to proceed with base station development on the same level as other companies.
Moreover, the fact that Chinese capital will be invested in Rakuten Mobile is also a major source of concern, and the development of base stations, as well as the case of new entry into SB's mobile phone business, will take at least 10 years. Sooner or later, there may be cases where Rakuten Mobile is acquired by Japan Post because of a financial standoff! ?
About manual connection to Rakuten line
On devices other than smartphones purchased from Rakuten Mobile, automatic switching from partner line (AU) to Rakuten line is not possible. Therefore, in addition to switching from the partner line area to Rakuten line, it is necessary to restart the terminal or perform manual switching by the following procedure (for Android).
⚙ Android Device Settings→ Connection→ Mobile Network→ Roaming Settings→ Carrier→ Manual Selection → [4G] Rakuten
Even if the switch to Rakuten line is successful, if the AU radio wave is strong, it will be roamed to the partner line, so I think that there is no choice but to give up in that case.
We are connected to the smartphone by Wi-Fi at home, so there is no problem, but if there is no Wi-Fi environment and you want to always connect to rakuten line, home antenna Rakuten Casa may be resolved by installing .
2021.04.10 Added
Rakuten Mobile's "au Area Roaming" Scheduled to End
As described in the following article, KDDI will update the plan to end roaming services for Rakuten Mobile (Carrier Service) users on April 1, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government will terminate the service except for a part, and Chiba prefecture and Kanagawa Prefecture will end the service in principle by the end of March 2022.
In other words, in Chiba Prefecture and Kanagawa Prefecture, it means that all Rakuten line areas will be in place by next spring.
Due to the contract with KDDI, it seems that we are in a hurry to maintain it on a forced schedule, but on the contrary, I feel that a blank zone where radio waves are not connected will also occur.
In the contract with KDDI, there is a condition that "for prefectures where Rakuten Mobile's population coverage in its own area exceeds 70%, after consultation with Rakuten Mobile and KDDI, roaming services will be terminated without waiting for a deadline", so the priority of base station development is to develop from suburbs with relatively small populations, It seems to be proceeding in the order of developing the area around the station where the population is concentrated later.
2023.02.19 Added
MNP to IIJmio and Povo2.0
After that, as in the article below, the main machine (Galaxy S10+) was MNP to IIJmio, and the sub machine (iPhone SE2) was to Povo2.0.
