The Growth of 5G Within Europe With Jan Karlsson of Ericsson

Jan Karlsson Senior Vice President and Head of Business Area Digital Services, Ericsson

What is your background briefly?

I joined Ericsson in 2014 as Head of IT & Cloud in Latin America, leading the sales and delivery of several OSS/BSS projects which were among of the first of their kind to go live in the region. In 2017 I moved back to Sweden to head up BSS globally in Ericsson and since early 2018 I head up Ericsson’s Digital Services division includes software and services in the areas of monetization and management systems (OSS/BSS), telecom core (packet core and communication services), and cloud & NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) infrastructure.

Before joining Ericsson in 2014, I was CEO of DigitalRoute, an independent software vendor focusing on data collection and pre-processing across telco and non-telco verticals. This role gave me very good experience in how to scale a global software and services business across a wide range of applications with a focused and highly-efficient software offering.

Ericsson has had an Irish presence for a long time. Tell us about why this has continued for so long?

Our presence in Ireland dates back to 1957 when we became one of the first tech companies to open here. We opened our R&D centre in Athlone about 20 years later, in the 1970s, and since the very beginning, it has been one of country’s largest and represents significant ongoing investment by Ericsson in Ireland. When we invest in R&D in a country we take a long term view so that we can work with innovation and collaboration with industry, university, research partners and obviously also with our customers.

We have been very successful in these areas, which has helped to support our growth and commitment to the country.

Today, Ericsson employs over 1400 people in Ireland with more than 1000 working in R&D. Ericsson Ireland has global responsibility for Ericsson’s Operation Support System (OSS) product portfolio. It also houses the network and IT competences responsible for the architecture and development of Ericsson’s Digital Services portfolio, including Network Management, Orchestration, Assurance and Optimization products. These products are built using leading technologies such as cloud-native, microservices, automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The competence of the people and the results they have created has to led us to stay in Athlone. On top of access to key talent, Ericsson values the way in which the Irish Government makes it easy for companies to do business. Stability in policy and approach are key factors in any investments decisions that multi-nationals take.

Also, share some thoughts on the challenge of aiming to be both an agile company and yet managing the challenge that goals and targets are set from Sweden rather than locally in Ireland?

Ericsson is a global company and our R&D site in Athlone has a global responsibility. We deliver to our customers globally from Ireland and has a site for our local Irish customers, who also brings benefits from our global operations located around in the world.

When working agile the idea is to work close and interactively with customers to fulfil their needs. This means that company targets will be set in a different way like rate of improvement, response times, customer satisfaction etc. not exactly what to do when. Ericsson has a way of managing this to serve the needs of our global customer base.

Tell us about Ericsson’s contribution to 5G and the opportunities and challenges with 5G in Europe?

Ericsson is a technology leader in 5G. Pioneering customers select us as their 5G partner and we are first with commercial live networks, currently, 6 live networks, in the United States, South Korea, and Switzerland and have already deployed operational 5G networks based on commercial equipment in Europe, Middle East, Australia and Asia. We have publicly announced commercial 5G deals with 18 named operator customers, which, at the moment, is more than any other vendor.

We have a strong and flexible 5G portfolio in place to enable our customers to switch on 5G already today in all main frequency bands for global deployments and utilize their valuable spectrum assets in the most efficient way. Our only focus is to make our customers win and our customers have every opportunity to be ahead with 5G.

Race to #5G! Networks at sports venues today serve the fans. In the future, the teams and athletes will leverage 5G to enhance their performance. Here's how: https://t.co/vHFdW6JHlg pic.twitter.com/nBkJrNBf9T

— Ericsson (@ericsson) June 5, 2019

The Ericsson Radio System hardware, for example, is 5G-ready since 2015 and can be used also for 5G NR with remote software installation. In total, we have shipped over 3 million 5G readies (hardware) radios to our customers since 2015, which gives us and our customers a unique advantage. This enables our customer’s smooth network evolution to 5G and protects their past investments.

5G is wider than one technology and one frequency band. All operators will need a mix of low, mid and high bands to achieve 5G coverage, capacity and support a wide range of use cases. Our strong portfolio supports all main frequency bands globally and has been tested with main chipset vendors.

To build 5G for a wide area, operators will need to reuse existing 4G frequency bands to achieve efficient coverage. Our Ericsson Spectrum Sharing is the most economically feasible way to introduce 5G in existing bands – enabling nation-wide 5G coverage from day one. This is a software feature that does not require new hardware on our existing 5G-ready radios.

How soon will there be 5G and how widely distributed across Ireland?

Ericsson is ready to speed up 5G in Europe and can help our customers deploy 5G at any time with equipment and competence.

The 5G roll-out in a specific country depends on various things, amongst others spectrum availability and the local regulations. It is then up to the service providers to take a decision on how they would like to start implementing 5G and level of investment.

In the case of Ireland, the operators have spoken about 5G starting with Trials in 2019 and then roll out from 2020 onwards. Like the rest of Europe, Ireland needs Spectrum to be auctioned that will enable geographic distribution and we do not see that spectrum coming in Ireland for around 2 years. Without this Spectrum, we expect to see the initial rollout of 5G limited to the main cities only.

How can people find out more about you & your work?

Our website Ericsson.com offers more information and details on our presence in Ireland as well as our technology offering.

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