Open RAN pioneer Rakuten Symphony and SLT-Mobitel, the national telecommunications services provider in Sri Lanka, are to collaborate on a pilot project to build an open radio access network (open RAN) comprising 4G and 5G NSA/SA (non-standalone and standalone) sites within Sri Lanka.

SLT-Mobitel will leverage Rakuten Symphony’s advanced open RAN portfolio to deliver innovative network infrastructure for the project, including a virtualised centralised unit (CU) and distributed unit (DU) infrastructure, along with pre-certified third party 4G and 5G open radio units (RUs). 

The partnership is said to be part of a wider strategic initiative led by Rakuten Mobile, Rakuten Symphony’s parent company, supported by the Japanese government. This initiative is accelerating global open RAN adoption. To date, initiatives have been rolled out in India, Vietnam, Kuwait and Kenya.

The project will be among the first Open RAN deployments in South Asia and serves as a precursor to a nationwide Open RAN deployment in Sri Lanka, aimed at enhancing SLT-Mobitel’s network agility, efficiency and scalability.

As we noted in September, Rakuten Symphony has also announced a collaboration with Bangladeshi operator Grameenphone to build an open RAN. The pilot network will include 4G and 5G NSA sites and marks the first phase of an eventual nationwide open RAN deployment across Grameenphone’s footprint, which serves around 86 million mobile subscribers.

However, the future of open RAN is by no means assured. A recent feature in these pages, assessing the landscape in 2025, showed a cautious mobile infrastructure market for the technology.