Ericsson CTO says telecommunications industry is at an inflection point

Ericsson’s analyst and media day at County Hall on the banks of the River Thames in London, England last week heralded a significant shift — not just for the Swedish vendor, but for the entire communications industry.  “We are at an inflection point,” Erik Ekudden, Ericsson’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO), pointed out in his opening remarks. After a sticky start, carriers have recognized the value of 5G and are finally starting to successfully monetize it in new ways beyond just selling capacity, moving beyond POCs (proofs of concept) to launching revenue-generating services. Ekudden says this transition rests on three interdependent technologies: mobile, cloud and AI. But there is a fourth factor at work here, also: diplomacy, which is at the heart of Ericsson’s success in bringing together a who’s who of the world’s leading carriers to collaborate on developing ways to deploy and charge for new services.