Rakuten Symphony, NEC, and U.K. operator Virgin Media O2 are pushing their joint open radio access network (RAN) trial into the field, turning on a handful of live sites on the carrier’s commercial network. The move continues an aggressive government-mandated push for U.K. operators to roll out open RAN technology.

The live trial is using NEC’s system integration services, Rakuten Symphony’s Open RAN software, edge cloud, radio management, and operations systems, and is running in Virgin Media O2’s brownfield network in the Northamptonshire region of the U.K. The live deployment comes on the heels of testing at NEC and Rakuten Symphony’s labs in India and NEC’s open RAN lab in London.

NEC recently boosted its system integration capabilities by acquiring Aspire Technology. The Ireland-based firm was founded by former Ericsson engineers in 2010, and provides consulting and network integration services to operators, with a focus on open RAN products.

“The strong capabilities and the deep pool of talented engineers at Aspire Technology, combined with their portfolio of technology solutions and applications, is a big step forward for our NEC Open Networks strategy,” NEC 5G GM Naohisa Matsuda, noted in a statement on the deal. “NEC is now better prepared than any supplier to integrate disaggregated network components into a well-tuned ecosystem.”

NEC has been working with Rakuten Mobile on its 5G deployment in Japan and with a handful of other operators on open RAN-based 5G commercial deployments and network trials.

The Virgin Media O2 deal is also another feather in Rakuten Symphony’s cap.

The standalone company was formed late last year by the Japanese e-commerce giant to push its open RAN architecture into more networks around the world. Earlier this year it scored deployment deals with AT&T, Cisco, Nokia, and Qualcomm, which followed previous deals with operators like Germany’s 1&1 Drillisch.

The U.K. deployment also continues an aggressive move by that country’s government in tapping open RAN to better secure domestic networks.

The government in mid-2020 mandated that all network equipment from China-based vendor Huawei be removed by 2027. That led European operators like Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, and Telefónica to push toward open RAN platforms in an attempt to expand and diversify their vendor options.

The operators signed an agreement to individually and jointly commit to deploy the technology, which separates hardware from software in telecommunications networks with open interfaces. Mobile carriers are especially interested in open RAN because it is framed as an alternative to the proprietary nature of RAN and the effective monopoly enjoyed by a trio of global RAN suppliers.

Vodafone has been one of the leaders in the U.K., with the operator launching its first commercial open RAN site late last year with plans to expand that effort to an additional 2,500 open RAN sites in the southwest of England and most of Wales by 2027.