The President
and chief executive officer at Ericsson, Mr. Börje Ekholm has adduced some
reasons why digital economy needs strong fifth-generation (5G) foundation,
reports ITRealms.
Speaking
at the just concluded 2018 Mobile World Congress in
a keynote fireside chat with Karen Tso, co-anchor of Squawk Box Europe on CNBC, Ekholm
reiterated that 5G has moved from buzzword to a commercial reality,
highlighting the company’s 38 Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) and several
commercial contracts with service providers.
This,
he said, avails 5G to position service providers at the center of the digital ecosystem.
“We
see 5G as a way to show the value of the network. A lot of technology depends
on a strong mobile infrastructure,” he said, stressing that while increased
speed will be important with 5G, lower latency and longer battery life could be
even more so.
5G,
he said, has been designed to be the industrial internet, with remote control
of machinery and maintenance with augmented reality as two prime examples.
“At
the same time, the consumer will see this too, for instance, in health care and
autonomous vehicles where low latency will be a critical factor,” Ekholm said.
On
the need for the right regulatory regime, he also said deregulation in Europe
and easier site permitting processes, will allow for the rapid build out of
sites necessary for 5G.
“It’s
important for governments to see networks as critical natural resources. 100
years ago, we built out railways and roads. The future roads are digital
highways,” he declared and looking ahead to the future on several levels –
commercially, in terms of new devices and in how 5G will dramatically change lives.
“5G
will be a commercial reality for a couple reasons,” he said. “The first is data
traffic. We need 5G to bring cost per gigabyte down. We also see
that early movers in new technology gain a benefit. We saw that with
early movers in 4G – they get higher average revenue per user and higher market
share.”
Ericsson
predicts there will be a billion 5G devices on the market by 2023, and they
could likely shift how we interact with our connected devices.
“We’ll
see more wearables. And fragmentation on the device side will be larger. Today
the smartphone is the center of ecosystem. That could look different in a
5G world.”
But
it’s also about opening up possibilities.
“Think
about the smartphone. Did we think that we would use it to stream video and
music, order food and order a cab? No. The new use cases will come as the
technology matures,” Ekholm said.
Chuks Egbune/GEE
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