In March we signed a strategic partnership agreement with Odine, a global technology partner, to transform the networks of its service provider customers in Africa, Middle East and Turkey business with Rakuten Symphony solutions.
So, we were excited to go behind the scenes of this partnership with two Odine executives at MWC Barcelona 2025 to get their insight on the partnership and market opportunity.
Odine is a technology partner to service providers through Turkey, Middle East and Africa. The company specializes in sustainable network and digital transformation. The strategic partnership between the customers enables Odine to bring cutting edge Open RAN, OSS and cloud-native software to its customers.
At the show, I conducted an interview with Tarkan Alagöz, Chief Revenue Officer, Odine. He mentioned that many carriers in the region are now gearing up their networks for 5G services and that opens the doors to a wide range of enabling technologies including Open vRAN, containerization, network automation, operating support system (OSS) and more.
“It's very exciting for us being a partner with Rakuten Symphony,” Alagöz said. “The technology is evolving very fast, especially in our region. 5G is approaching in 2026, and telecom operators are building out these networks. Together with Rakuten, we are helping our operators in the country to provide futureproof, next-generation technologies.”
Alagöz mentioned working in emerging markets in Kenya and South Africa where cost-effective Open RAN, cloud-native containerization and network automation are ideal for these operators to transform their networks. It is critical to integrate these new networks with these service providers’ legacy networks and that’s where Odine’s system integration experience really benefits the service provider.
My colleague Muhammad Talaat, global Head of Presales, Rakuten Symphony, spoke with Burak Demirel, Presales Director, Odine.
“In Middle East, Turkey and Africa, all of the telecom operators are innovating and evolving their networks to transform their business,” Demirel said. “I believe with Rakuten Symphony’s innovative solutions and our complex system integration and AI capabilities, we can really make this transformation happen.”
Demirel said one of the big trends in the region is cloudifying the network, which Odine will help out with using Rakuten Cloud software which combines a Kubernetes containerization platform with orchestration and storage capabilities.
Demirel said: “All of the telecom operators are looking at cloudifying their network by containerizing all their network elements. This is not an easy task. This is a multi-vendor environment with different hardware. There are different applications from different vendors. We've been doing this for the last 10 years, so we have real experience that will make this easy for our customers. With the solutions that are coming from Rakuten, really we think that we can take it to the next level.”
The other big issues that Odine can solve using Rakuten Symphony software is using our OSS capabilities to better automate their networks. This will be important support for AI use cases that need fast response to network issues.
Change is coming to networks in Turkey, Middle East and Africa and will mean great things to businesses and consumers. Rakuten Symphony offers the technology to make this evolution cost effective, high performance and automated. Partnering with Odine, we have a complete solution that includes network software and system integration to make it work.
Here's a link to my full interview with Alagöz and here you can watch Talaat’s discussion with Demirel.
