Ericsson
Augmenting Solutions for ‘The Networked Society’

Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, has been credited to ending a product category, telephones, that had been with the company since its establishment. The generational shift, focus from voice to data, being witnessed in the telecom arena is driven by the proliferation of mobile devices, empowered consumers, and disruptive and OTT players. Although the consumers are benefited by the range of services offered, businesses are struggling to stay afloat in the competitive environment. Ericsson, the Swedish telecom giant, has been in the forefront of adapting to the radical shift in the wireless industry.“Historically, the mobile industry has been focused on the consumer getting better performance and throughput to their devices,” says Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson. “Now we’re seeing demands from the industry that is different from those of consumers with things like security, location, and especially latency playing a major role.”

Ericsson is focusing on its core business of mobile infrastructure and services, taking money from profits and investing in new areas that it believes its future lies—‘The networked society.’ “Mobile is the fastest moving technology in mankind’s history. There are 7.4 billion mobile subscriptions in the world—the most advanced shared technology that has ever been seen. No other technology has spread like this,” Vestberg adds. “The amount of data carried by mobile networks is increasing every year and the number of connected machine-to-machine devices, sensors and actuators, is expected to reach 50 billion by 2020.” In order to enable telecom operators capitalize on the mobile trends, Ericsson has successfully revamped their offerings to align with persistent telecommunication community’s demands. By introducing solutions like Licensed Assisted Access to their indoor smart cell portfolio, the company enables operators to improve app coverage indoors in any size or type of commercial building. Ericsson Mobile Telephony Evolution, with VoLTE (Voice over LTE) business solution, provides operators with a complete solution to evolve their voice business towards an all-IP communications network.

A host of other solutions have been upgraded by the telecom behemoth to empower telecom operators across the globe to evolve with their subscribers’ demands. Usually the transition from CDMA to LTE takes three years, while MetroPCS was able to provide across the country in a year’s time. The company was facing increased consumer demand, limited spectrum assets, and a need to provide the best user-quality network, and thus approached Ericsson to revamp its services. “Our services team worked closely with the customer to deliver truly innovative solutions, whether the focus was planning, design, deployment or optimization,” says Nishant Batra, VP and Key Account Manager for MetroPCS, Ericsson. “We did this with great speed and quality, market-by-market in 12 markets across the U.S. Deploying a network of this scale in record time was definitely a challenging and intense experience.”

In order to enable telecom operators capitalize on the mobile trends, Ericsson has successfully revamped their offerings to align with persistent telecommunication community’s demands

Ericsson is now working towards extending the capabilities of 5G wireless access to enable connectivity for a wide range of new applications and use cases. Though Vestberg believes that setting year 2020 as the deadline for 5G is still too early, Ericsson is spearheading 5G system development and collaborating with European Union for the standardization. “5G is going to be higher speeds and lower latency. The requirements from the industry are bold and we are working on them,” concludes Vestberg.