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3h | Natalie Bannrman
Rakuten Viber, a VoIP messaging app and Dialog Axiata, a leading Sri Lankan connectivity provider, have announced an official partnership.
The news follows years of prior cooperation between the two in international voice business, and will see Rakuten Viber act as an international Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging platform for Dialog Axiata.
“This partnership is a very important step for Rakuten Viber and our continued efforts to expand the company presence and footprint in the APAC region,” said Matan Barth (pictured), senior director of telecom services at Rakuten Viber
“Our telecom partners will surely benefit from the new A2P communication channel we offer with Dialog Axiata to Sri Lanka.”
Through this partnership, more than 300 Rakuten Viber carrier seamlessly communicate with more than 16 million Dialog Axiata customers using the Rakuten Viber A2P bilateral service.
“Rakuten Viber is one of the most popular messaging apps and has a very strong position in the market,” said Ravi Sankar Vaddi, senior consultant – international business and enterprise data at Dialog Axiata.
“Having their own developed infrastructure and a large presence in A2P messaging, Viber provides us with a high-quality A2P SMS traffic exchange. This allows Dialog’s subscribers and clients to benefit from superior and assured connectivity, as their messaging experience becomes more seamless.”
In related news, June saw Dialog Axiata open another Tier 3 data centre near Colombo, Sri Lanka. The facility is located in Piliyandala and will be used by the telco to widen its cloud and IT services offering to business and government customers.
In addition, May saw Rakuten Mobile, the mobile unit of Rakuten, partner with NEC to promote open RAN networks worldwide. Rakuten is already operating what it believes is the first 5G cloud-based open radio access networks (open RANs) in Japan, and the two companies now want to spread their expertise globally.