Anil Sawkar is President, RAN Business Unit of Rakuten Symphony, with his previous role as President of the Network Business Function Unit at the company. Sawkar has over 25 years of experience, developing and deploying wireless and data communications systems globally, managing large Product Engineering teams in the U.S., UK and India.
Sawkar is a Bell Labs Fellow and holds multiple patents in Wireless Networking.
Previously as a Senior VicePresident of Global Engineering of Altiostar Networks (now part of Rakuten Symphony), Sawkar spear headed the development and deployment of Virtual RAN product, supporting both 4G & 5G access technologies. He was one of the earliest employees in setting the product directions for the Altiostar Network startup.
His previous work experience includes Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies and Alcatel-Lucent Inc. Sawkar was the Vice President at Alcatel-Lucent responsible for LTE system requirements, architecture and performance. He successfully managed multi-phased technology trials with operators in North America, Europe and Asia and the commercial launch of LTE networks with North America’s operators. Prior to that, he successfully deployed 3G-EVDO, 2.5G and 2G-3G/1X wireless networks systems across North America, Europe and Asia.