T-Mobile US CTO, speaking at Ericsson event, adds that 5G is ‘not real today.’
BARCELONA, Spain – Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm, who took the top job in October, kicked off the Swedish vendor’s Mobile World Congress presence with a look ahead at “5G,” which he said will be needed by “all businesses and industries.”
“5G goes beyond the regular operator business. It’s a business revolution,” Ekholm said, noting that in a decade the 5G market, “when you think in the broadest context,” will be worth $1.2 trillion. “5G is not a buzzword. It is happening. We are ready with solutions as well as products that positions our customers and partners to plan for the future and to benefit from 5G.”
With that summary statement on 5G, Ekholm introduced T-Mobile US CTO Neville Ray who dedicated the vast majority of his comments to LTE and the so-called “un-carrier” approach to it.
“We’ve kind of been kicking ass,” Ray said, adding that on the topic of 5G, “It’s not real today,” in that it can’t be delivered to customers without radios and handsets.
“There is so much capability in the LTE market space today,” Ray said. “The U.S. is one of the most advanced LTE markets. For us, we are all in on LTE, and when we move to 5G I don’t want to have a 2G and 3G network. I am retiring legacy technologies at a furious pace. We are driving hard towards an all LTE network.”
“We’re hugely excited about 5G,” Ray threw in. But, “if we look at what has transformed this industry over the last five, six years, it’s LTE.”
In some ways, these contrasting comments speak directly to Ericsson’s primary challenge, which is as the Financial Times encapsulated last year following a disappointing Ericsson quarterly report: “The Swedish group has now been hit hard by a slowdown in spending by European mobile operators and a wait until the next-generation 5G networks are ready to be rolled out in the U.S. and Asia towards the end of the decade.”
