Japanese Open RAN solutions provider Rakuten Symphony said on Monday it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Zain Kuwait to collaborate on a pilot project to deploy cloud-native 5G Open RAN sites in Kuwait.
Under the MoU, Zain Kuwait will utilize Rakuten Symphony’s ORAN and Cloud portfolio – including its Open RAN virtualized Distributed Unit and Centralized Unit software, along with cloud-native virtualized software – to establish standalone 5G sites.
Rakuten Symphony will work with Zain to ensure that its Open RAN solution is fully functional and capable of handling commercial traffic. Meanwhile, Zain Kuwait will allocate the required cell sites for the project, and also provide data centre infrastructure and 5G SA core with related transport connectivity.
“By venturing into networks driven by cloud-native, open principles and leveraging Rakuten Symphony’s proven portfolio, Zain Kuwait has the potential to realize the benefits of increased operational flexibility and reduced time to market, in turn delivering better performance for customers,” said Rakuten Symphony president Sharad Sriwastawa in a statement.
Zain Kuwait CTO Daaij Al-Oud said the initial phase of the project will mark Kuwait’s first Open RAN deployment. “By piloting the country’s first cloud-native Open RAN deployment, we aim to unlock new levels of network agility, efficiency, and scalability.”
Zain Kuwait expects the pilot project to pave the way for a planned large-scale commercial deployment of Open RAN not only in Kuwait, but across the Zain Group’s operations across eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Sister telco Zain KSA signed a MoU with Rakuten Symphony in March 2023 to collaborate on a blueprint for a cloud-native Open RAN architecture for 4G and 5G networks.
