Barcelona: Axiata Enterprise, a business solutions company of Axiata Group Berhad and Rakuten Symphony today announced an agreement that will see Rakuten Symphony supply and deliver private network telecommunications services.

This service is across Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Indonesia.

Through the agreement, Rakuten Symphony and Axiata will bring innovative Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) solutions currently deployed by Rakuten Mobile in Japan to business customers across South Asia looking to deploy Open RAN-compliant enterprise private wireless networks.

Rakuten Symphony assists telcos worldwide with the deployment of fully cloud-native network services based on open standards and advanced automation and orchestration, enabling companies to easily build secure and open mobile networks at high speed and low cost.

“Today’s agreement with Rakuten Symphony presents business owners and enterprises in ASEAN and South Asia a way to level up their game through Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) Private 4G and 5G Network technology," said Dr Gopi Kurup, CEO, Axiata Enterprise.

Dr Gopi added that by being among the first movers in the Enterprise 5G and Smart Services domain, our Operating Companies (“OpCos”) are primed as preferred Service Providers throughout our footprint.

Tareq Amin, CEO, Rakuten Mobile and Rakuten Symphony said they are excited to announce our agreement with Axiata Enterprise to deploy Rakuten Symphony’s innovative Open RAN products.

"Packaged as network-in-a-box solutions, to their business customers across Asia looking to provide private enterprise telco solutions," said Tareq.

Rakuten Mobile has set multiple industry landmarks with its full-scale launch of commercial mobile services on the world’s first fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network in 2020. Rakuten Symphony, launched in 2021, is now bringing 4G and 5G infrastructure and platform solutions under a single global banner to operators globally.

This innovative approach to building mobile networks brings both cost and operational efficiencies, as well as speed in deploying new services and generating additional revenue streams for the operator.

Representatives from Axiata Group Berhad ('Axiata'), Axiata Enterprise and Rakuten Symphony, including Thomas Hundt, Group Chief Strategy & Technology Officer, Axiata (third from left), Dr Hans Wijayasuriya, Joint Acting Group CEO (fourth from left), Axiata, Dr Gopi Kurup (fourth from right), CEO, Axiata Enterprise, and Rabih Dabboussi (center), Chief Business Officer, Rakuten Symphony, meeting at MWC Barcelona 2023