Rakuten Symphony appointed former Telefonica CTIO Enrique Blanco (pictured) as a strategic adviser, charging the experienced executive with helping guide the company’s technology and support its ongoing expansion across global markets.

Blanco was global CTIO at Telefonica from 2017 until 2025, having previously been CTO at the group. Towards the end of his stint at the operator he was a vocal supporter of the move to open and virtualised network infrastructure.

Rakuten highlighted the expert brought decades of experience in the telecoms industry, which would help it in a drive to accelerate operator network modernisation.  

Part of the remit of the newly created role is to support adoption of AI-driven operations in the sector, with the ultimate aim of improving end user experience and achieving long term growth.

The vendor noted Blanco joins at a time when operators are upping investments in infrastructure and intelligence while being under pressure to improve returns and deliver better customer experiences.

These trends, it believes, are driving interest in software-based networks, automation and open ecosystems.

Rakuten Symphony president Sharad Sriwastawa said Blanco’s “insights and expertise will accelerate our work with like-minded service providers that want to build better networks for the future of connectivity. His experience will enable us to provide even greater support to operators as they move beyond network modernisation and embrace AI-driven business transformation”.

Blanco added: “The industry has made significant progress over the past decade as we’ve advanced to 5G and beyond, but operators still face many of the same challenges around complexity, cost and speed of innovation.”

Noting Rakuten’s willingness to “rethink” how networks are built and operated, he noted “open architectures, automation and cloud-native technologies give operators more flexibility to adapt their businesses and respond to changing customer expectations. I’m looking forward to helping shape that next stage of the industry’s evolution”.

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