Profile: CEO Borje Ekholm wants to put the record straight on Ericsson’s 5G efforts amid Huawei woes
- Ekholm says it is a ‘myth’ that Ericsson has fallen behind in 5G - says Europe needs to speed up deployment of new technology, allocate more spectrum
Ericsson might be in the top 3 when it comes to market share for telecommunications equipment, but recently its chief executive Borje Ekholm has not been happy.
The source of Ekholm’s unhappiness is the “myth” that Ericsson has fallen behind in next-generation 5G networks – whether this be infrastructure roll-outs or the technology itself.
Such a myth is “puzzling”, wrote Ekholm in a blog post last week titled “Europe and 5G: Address the reality – not the myths”.
“We’re live with multiple operators in the US and Korea, and in Europe we’re live with Swisscom, the first to launch in the region,” Ekholm wrote.
“These are quite simply indisputable facts. It’s impossible to be behind in 5G when there is no-one in front of us.”
As such, Ekholm joins Nokia chief executive Rajeev Suri in a recent round of chest-beating over whose 5G technology is the best, at a time when Chinese rival Huawei has received the body blow of being added to a US trade blacklist, cutting it off from US technology suppliers.