Rakuten Symphony has secured a grant from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) to expand field testing of Open RAN technology with Ukraine's largest mobile operator, Kyivstar, as part of efforts to modernize the country's telecommunications infrastructure.
The project will deploy a cloud-native Open RAN environment around Kyiv, with 4G LTE field trials carrying commercial customer traffic and laboratory testing of 5G capabilities, according to a press release. Rakuten Mobile will participate as a technical partner.
