European Commission - Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology

07/27/2026 | News release | Archived content

Japan / Ukraine: Rakuten Symphony wins a Japanese government grant to expand Open Radio Access Network trials with Kyivstar in Ukraine

Rakuten Symphony secured Japanese government funding to expand Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) trials with Kyivstar into live 4G and 5G field testing.

Japan, 27 July 2026 - Rakuten Symphony announced that it has been selected for a grant from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) under a programme supporting Ukraine's reconstruction and cooperation with central and eastern European countries. The total project cost is approximately JPY 710 million, of which up to JPY 350 million (approximately USD 2.14 million) may be covered by the subsidy.

Under the project, Rakuten Symphony will provide a cloud-native Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) environment in Ukraine and carry out validation testing, building on its existing partnership with Ukrainian operator Kyivstar. Following the successful validation of key features and interoperability in a 4G environment during the first phase of the project, the companies will expand testing to combined 4G and 5G configurations and conduct field trials on a live network in Kyiv. The trials will evaluate both distributed and centralised radio access network architectures as they replace legacy infrastructure.

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