Rakuten Symphony and Veon will seek to accelerate the reconstruction of the country’s infrastructure, through collaboration on O-RAN

Rakuten Symphony has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with telecom operator Veon, with the aim of helping recovery of critical infrastructure in Ukraine, which has been impacted by the prolonged war with Russia.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will seek to accelerate the reconstruction of the country’s infrastructure, through collaboration on Open RAN (O-RAN) and digital services.

The MoU stipulates that the two companies commit to creating “a robust and future-proof telecommunications infrastructure” that can deliver high-speed connectivity enhanced with 5G, enabling the next generation of digital services in Ukraine. The two companies will also explore partnerships in other Veon markets.

Veon is the parent company of Ukraine’s operator Kyivstar and has recently committed to investing $600 million to rebuild Ukraine’s infrastructure. Announcing its investment commitment, Veon referred to the future deployment of 5G technology in Ukraine, for which it says O-RAN technologies are a “compelling” choice.

Rakuten Symphony is a provider of O-RAN solutions, and claims to have built the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile network with its parent company Rakuten Mobile.

Veon highlighted that its Ukrainian telco Kyivstar owns and operates digital services in health, entertainment, information and education, while Rakuten has international expertise in messaging and financial services. Rakuten’s instant messaging app Rakuten Viber, is a digital communication app in Ukraine, with near-ubiquitous mobile penetration rates in the country as well as very high adoption and engagement rates among Ukrainian nationals abroad. It also provides services to Ukrainian businesses  via an existing partnership with Kyivstar.

“Rakuten is honored to support the ‘We Build Ukraine’ initiative through potential collaboration with VEON to boost Ukraine’s critical national telecommunications infrastructure,” said Mickey Mikitani, chairman and CEO of Rakuten Group and chairman of Rakuten Symphony. “We look forward to bringing our technological expertise from Open RAN telecom solutions and a broad range of digital services including Rakuten Viber to support Ukraine in transforming its digital landscape, as well as exploring further joint opportunities in other Veon markets.”

“Veon and Rakuten share a similar vision: we are both highly customer-focused, digital experience-oriented companies which redefine communications in our respective markets,” said Kaan Terzioğlu, CEO of Veon. “We are very excited to partner with Rakuten to explore the opportunities in Veon’s markets, with a combined population of 510 million people.”

Earlier this year, Asian mobile telecommunications conglomerate Axiata and Rakuten Symphony had inked an agreement under which the latter will deliver private network telecommunications services across Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Indonesia.

In a release, both parties noted that the agreement will enable the deployment of O-RAN solutions to business customers across South Asia.

Rakuten Symphony had also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Saudi telco Zain for the provision of mobile services via O-RAN technology. Rakuten said it will work with Zain to implement a cloud-native, fully virtualized radio access solution architecture, which will be Open RAN 4G and 5G-based with advanced automation capabilities.