- The CEO of Ericsson, Börje Ekholm
- He largely described a question about the liability of Echostar as the fourth operator of the US institutions
- Ekholm emphasized the spectrum and AI as critical of future network innovations and competitiveness
The President and CEO of Ericsson, Börje Ekholm, appeared very home this week during a Fireside chat in the annual Aspen Forum of the Technology Policy Institute.
It is a suitable place for the CEO of the Ericsson resident in Stockholm, Sweden, for the praise of the United States and its productivity in telecommunications, although it no longer houses a large provider of telecommunications infrastructure.
Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm
In recent years, the largest US wireless operators have mainly relied on a combination of Nokia and Ericsson. But Verizon started Nokia a few years ago in favor of Samsung (while he maintains Ericsson) and AT&T Ericsson as Lead Open-Ran provider in 2023. T-Mobile remains the only US Big 3 carrier and used both Ericsson and Nokia.
Ekholm emphasized that the USA as a technology hub for Ericsson is of crucial importance. His company sells its products in more than 170 countries, but “I would say that our most important market are the United States,” he said. “It is a big market, but there are also customers of the front manager. If we want to lead innovation, we have to work with customers at the front attacks.”
In retrospect, US providers (we are reminded of Lucent) have various ways, including CDMA, which was the backbone of some of the American managers in telecommunications (Think Verizon), but CDMA never reached a global scale. “Business scale is what counts,” he said.
Ekholm did not comment on any question today that many heads have colonized: whether the United States should have three or four furnishing entrepreneurs, and he was not asked this question either. But indirectly, he was asked about Echostar's chances to be successful on the US market. Echostar, also known as DISH Network ASK Boost Mobile, created his 5G network with open ran from scratch – and Ericsson is not a provider.
“It is difficult for me to comment,” he said. “But most large markets have three to four operators. The United States has three very large ones [operators] And Echostar, and I think it is that you have to be annoying. “
This is not necessarily just annoying how you build your network. “It is actually about your offers. What do you aim at, what do you sell? Then I think there is a chance. This market can be clearly big enough,” he said.
Ericsson CEO of 5G too
Despite his optimistic remarks about the United States, he found that it is still behind China in the rollout of 5G standalone (SA), the “True 5G” technology, which delays many operators in favor of the more expedient 5G-not stand (NSA), which relies on LTE and enables the operators to use their 4G networks before the 5G.
According to Ekholm, this delay when moving to 5G SA is a problem. “China has built up the world's leading 5G standstalone network,” he said and found that it used around 4 million 5g SA base stations. “You are now starting to create new applications that use the functions in the network,” such as the factory robots, which can be used much more economically.
Only a large American operator-T-Mobile-Hat announced a nationwide 5G SA use and “you actually have monetized,” he said. Otherwise, if you ask most of the customers, they will say that they have difficulty monetizing 5G, and the reason is that most operators around the world have really built up 5G-not standalone and still have difficulty making money with 5G.
Us as a spectrum leader – in 4G
Spectrum appeared during the discussion, and it looks like China may be organizing the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference, on which many great worldwide spectrum decisions are made.
Ekholm said that there must be a strong western representation there and found how important licensed spectrum is to ensure safety, reliability and availability for mobile operators.
“You need really licensed spectrum. It is very difficult not to be licensed because you just don't know which devices will come into the equation,” he said. “If you have a humanoid or a robot or a self -driving vehicle that will rely on connectivity, it has to be really reliable. You cannot allow milliseconds from interruptions.”
Therefore, the next generation of automation, regardless of whether it uses AI or other automation, will require connectivity and a reliable spectrum pipeline.
“I think the USA was historically a spectrum,” he said. “Think of 4G, for example. It was administered very well in the USA and has brought the USA here at platform companies because they could develop next to the 4G network. Repeating in 6G will be important in my opinion.”
AI in the network
What is a telecommunications story without AI these days? Ekholm was asked about the role of AI in the network.
Of course it plays a big role. “Perhaps AI is the most basic technology that we have seen so far, maybe the best for us as a company and for us as a society,” said the CEO. “Then you can discuss if it is a hype or not. It doesn't matter. Everyone said that the Internet was a hype in 2002. I would not say that twenty -five years later. I would say that the effects are much greater.”
The company tends to overestimate the effects of a one-year horizon and to underestimate the effects of a 10-year horizon, he said.
“The effect begins to see now. We see it as we do networks,” he said. “We already see efficiency gains, for example in the spectrum efficiency in some of the most optimized algorithms in a radio network.”
That means: “We can still do better with AI to achieve 10% more spectrum efficiency. It is very meaningful. Then we do it in our business activities. Of course, it will basically change how we operate the company,” he said.
He admitted that there will be jobs in certain job categories, “but it will create new job categories,” he said.
In his view, the strategy of the US government of having a relatively relaxed regulation on AI is good compared to Europe. “I believe that the regulation is needed in any form, but if you regulate something before you have done, you have to regulate so many of the possible results that you will take a wet blanket for innovation, and that is exactly what happens in Europe,” he said.
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