Rakuten Symphony chief revenue officer Rabih Dabboussi urged African operators to build their networks with new services in mind and pivot away from margin shrinking traditional telecoms products. Having data as just a package with X number of gigabytes a month just doesn't really make sense anymore. “Services don't have to come from the operator, they can be a mix of operator-led, operator-managed and third party. Rakuten Symphony has proof of concept open RAN trials in five African nations South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco, through its operator partners including MTN Group. I think there is still a window of opportunity for some operators to adopt the new technology stack, and modernise even their 4G network.

Source: The North Africa Journal June 07, 2022 13:49 UTC