Wireless Networks

Rakuten Symphony gets METI grant to expand Open RAN tests with Kyivstar

Rakuten Symphony gets METI grant to expand Open RAN tests with Kyivstar

Rakuten Symphony announced on Monday it has landed a grant from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) to partly subsidise its project with Ukrainian telco Kyivstar to expand their Open RAN tests from the lab to the field.

Rakuten Symphony and Kyivstar have already completed the first phase of the project, in which involved lab tests of Rakuten Symphony’s Open RAN and cloud solutions, validating key features and interoperability in a 4G environment.

The second phase will involve expanding those capabilities to 4G/5G configurations and conducting field tests around Kyiv in a live brownfield network.

The total cost of the project is expected to be approximately JPY710 million (US$4.3 million). The grant from METI will cover roughly half the cost at up to JPY350 million.

Rakuten Symphony said the second phase of the trial will evaluate both distributed RAN (D-RAN) and centralized RAN (C-RAN) architectures as part of a modernization initiative replacing legacy infrastructure, demonstrating the flexibility, resilience and operational benefits of open, cloud-native networks. 

Meanwhile, Rakuten Symphony and Kyivstar will also evaluate the technology’s 5G capabilities in a dedicated laboratory environment, which will ideally provide a foundation for possible future commercial deployment.

The two companies are also collaborating across OSS, cloud technologies and the broader Rakuten ecosystem to accelerate next-generation network transformation.

Rakuten Symphony’s collaboration with Kyivstar’s has been ongoing since the two companies signed a letter of intent (LoI) in February 2024 to deploy Rakuten’s Open RAN and 5G technologies. That LoI followed an MoU signed by Rakuten Symphony and Kyivstar’s parent company Veon to explore cooperation in Ukraine on Open RAN and digital services.

Rakuten Symphony also signed an MoU with Veon’s Beeline Uzbekistan in March this year to explore strategic collaborations that support Uzbekistan’s fast-growing digital economy, including open RAN, AI-powered network intelligence and next-generation digital platforms.



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