Rakuten Symphony and Celona teamed up on end-to-end open radio access network (RAN)-based private 5G solutions.

Aimed at large- and medium-sized enterprises, the collaboration pairs Rakuten Symphony’s cloud-native 5G open RAN infrastructure with Celona’s 5G local area network (LAN) enterprise platform. The offering is designed to support IoT-driven use cases and mission-critical applications for sectors including global logistics, manufacturing, agriculture, ports, and mining.

Rakuten added the solution will support multiple radio unit (RU) vendors and operate across multiple spectrum bands, helping with adaptability across regions and deployment environments.

Rakuten's private 5G heads into territory shared by the likes of Nokia and Ericsson.

As recently explored by this title, Ericsson sees private 5G as a strong market opportunity despite technical challenges, with the Swedish vendor making gains through recent work with Vodafone Portugal in deploying a private 5G network for cement and industrial materials producer Cimpor.

In contrast, Nokia has moved to shift investments away from private 5G, with CEO Justin Hotard suggesting the space has been beset by slower-than-anticipated enterprise traction and that the Finnish giant was perhaps not in the best position to drive further growth.

ABI Research in a recent report that touched on Nokia’s move, predicted that the firm’s retreat could prove lucrative for the broader market.

“Consolidation will bring private cellular closer to the enterprises and vertical-specific solution providers capable of embedding connectivity within comprehensive, end-to-end digital transformation offerings,” the report noted. “These players will understand what enterprises are predominantly interested in: use cases, outcomes, and business impact. To that end, they will be able to integrate the private cellular infrastructure as the connectivity layer into their existing network of partnerships with vertical-specific application developers and device manufacturers to create a more impactful and stronger value proposition for private cellular.”

In a recent interview with SDxCentral, Faiq Khan, SVP for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) for Rakuten Symphony, claimed, “the openness of RAN architecture is not a matter of choice; it's a matter of necessity and survival.” The exec pointed to the Rakuten cloud provision, as included in the Celona partnership, noting its end-to-end virtualized stack, correlating data, cross-domain use cases, and network orchestration.

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) last week selected Rakuten’s Symphony’s open RAN to boost the deployment of open RAN technologies across the Global South.

Celona, meanwhile, made waves last year when it launched what it claimed to be the first cloud-controlled, access point-only private 5G solution, designed to support AI-driven operations in industrial environments.That claim was rebuked by Moso Networks and Ataya, who pointed to the Ataya Chorus, a private 5G access point product launched in January 2024.