Apologies, first of all; these MWC files are being held in a long production queue, which is jammed with reports and sponsorships, and other internal initiatives. But this interview with Ericsson, from the showfloor in Barcelona a couple of weeks back, works like a handy one-two with last week’s entry about Nokia (still to be finished), which sought at the end to compare the private 5G strategies of these old familiars. Here, we present Ericsson’s story, which has developed fast in the last 12-18 months, and which diverges from its Finnish rival’s bold adventures in the enterprise market. But how do we start? Well, let’s just ask the question…
How is Ericsson’s profile different in this private 5G game? And we are not asking for a direct comparison with Nokia – except that we are, actually. The question goes to Åsa Tamsons, senior vice president and head of enterprise wireless solutions at the Swedish firm. She responds: “We just see ourselves as a network player – to redefine the networks of the future with a 5G-first or 5G-centric architecture.” The point, as written in these pages previously, is that these two companies are like old sporting rivals, from the same stock, with shared histories and ambitions, whose fortunes have fluctuated in recent times in opposition to each other.
But just as Ericsson, stealing public 5G contracts away in global markets, gets its house in order at the enterprise edge, where private 5G finds a home, they somehow look less alike – both as they interface with enterprises, and with their legacy telco customers. So what gives? “We [want to] bring those [network] capabilities to the world, beyond just consumer handsets; to make sure they can be accessed by the IT ecosystem,” says Tamsons. It does not sound hugely different to Nokia’s strategy – on the grounds they both talk at industry-level about application programming interfaces (APIs) to monetize 5G infrastructure. But it is.
The Finnish firm’s enterprise unit has agitated for five years quite-separately of its troubled telco business, since before spectrum was liberalised for industrial organisations in regional markets – for the ecosystem to move faster, to the point it has taken things into its own hands and developed business lines around edge systems and software. (Check out its announcement today about its Industry 4.0 marketplace on its MXIE edge server.) Whereas Ericsson has waited and waited and waited, it seems – and reorganised its enterprise channel around its US-based Cradlepoint business, and otherwise let its enterprise strategy riff off its group-level telco rumblings.
Remember five years ago, when Nokia was mob-handed at Hannover Messe, trying to drum-up industrial interest in a stripped-back proto-version of 5G (LTE), and Ericsson was holding court at MWC, insisting it would always defer to its operator customers in pursuit of enterprise sales? It was the point of departure for these firms, played out on tradeshow stages, where their strategies went separate ways. Things have changed, and aligned to an extent; neither firm is about to turn business away. Ericsson wants telcos to lead, you sense, and can draw on group-level contracts with them to win major deals, notably in the US, and to leverage locally-annexed carrier spectrum.
But it has aggressively developed its reseller channel over 12 months, too, and it is happy to go direct for the big prizes, as well, pulling-in operators and integrators as required. So its position has changed, even if its reverence for its old telco customers remains. By contrast, Nokia (still) just wants everyone to move faster, and is ready to take a direct hand if it thinks its partners, whoever they are, whatever their reputation, are not pulling their weight. (See its strategy shift to take back “control” of direct sales – to convince customers and to cajole partners.) And besides, Nokia thinks 5G is just a glorified pipe – however easily its features can be manipulated by developers.
The real expandable value for enterprises sits on top of this network layer, it thinks. Which is why it is selling an edge combination-setup (as a platform for third-party solution vendors, as well) and not just a network. But Ericsson is different; it will not mess about higher-up in this multi-layered edge stack. Is that the smart-play, then, for a heritage telecoms outfit? Is the opposite a risky play? Tamsons talks about the company’s moves to make the network ‘layer’ simpler and richer in terms of its management and features. It is “building a lot” on its NetCloud proposition, she says, inherited from Cradlepoint in late 2020, and integrated and expanded early last year (2024).
Its router portfolio from Cradlepoint (now ‘Ericsson-Cradlepoint’) is a part of the bargain, too. “Because all of this enables AI at the edge,” she remarks, making reference to “high-value” IoT sensors that work better on cellular networks, and which might shift the needle for enterprises. She says more about “unification and simplification” of the software layer in its networks, too, which include private and neutral host systems, plus wireless wide-area network (WAN) services. “It is about how to reduce friction, at every point – in the network, in the channel, in the business model, in the value… We are very business focused – so enterprises realise cellular is a foundational infrastructure.”
She responds, more directly: “When it comes to monetization, we have network APIs. That is what that story is all about. If you want to be relevant higher in the stack, you need quite-vertical expertise. For us, this is a horizontal technology. And there are giants there already in every other horizontal layer – in every one of them.” Which says everything, perhaps. For Ericsson, as said, it is all about the network – which is a different message, in marketing terms at least, from Nokia’s. Deploy programmable networks, standardise application interfaces, and watch a new 5G future open up – it tells the telco crowd, and everyone. Don’t fret; Ericsson has your back – kind of thing.
5G is not just another pipe, it implies; it is a crucial multi-featured money-spinning digital-change platform. Of course, it is about marketing, to an extent. A Nokia exec baulked when this argument was replayed in a backroom in Barcelona; that Ericsson comes across like the good shepherd of big telecoms, which is now reversing its whole network play, with its ADUNA assembly and its pitch about programmability, into the small telecoms space. Like we aren’t too! – came the response from Nokia, with a reference to its no-code platform and API marketplace, acquired late last year. But Ericsson, progressive and conservative at the same time, is top-down and network-first.
What does Ericsson think? It is like you are the purist, somehow; the archetypal MWC-style telecoms player, which believes in the total operational power and commercial value of cellular technology, and is duty-bound to expose its capabilities in partnership and at length for the rest of the market. Tamsons responds: “My only reaction is that we are not [only] a telecoms player. We have telco customers, and we build the technology for their networks. But this technology is not just for the telco industry. It is for all industries. Yes, the carriers have a role to play; they own the license and the spectrum. But our solutions are not limited to them. We work with industry-spectrum, too.”
She goes on: “We want to make sure 5G capabilities are pervasive across industry. So I wouldn’t put it in those words; we have an industry vision of high-performing programmable networks, which should be an essential part of the whole IT and tech ecosystem. It is as foundational a layer as the cloud. If you think about hyperscale-cloud, think about hyperscale-networks. And those come in many different forms. That is what I would say.” She makes reference to the ADUNA project – which gathers the “three largest operators, and the two largest in India, and the major ones in Europe” – to expose network APIs at global scale for sale “to the Vonages of the world”.
But that is an example of good and responsible stewardship, on behalf of the telecoms industry. “And that is correct; that part is correct. But we are opening up the whole ecosystem with everyone. This is not a [telecoms] committee; it is so everyone else can consume these network capabilities, which are about connectivity and beyond, in a way where it is not just regional. You talk about Nokia and its edge strategy and everything else; we are focused on 5G. That does not mean we are not partnering with people to deliver those other things, right? We want those leading players in those ecosystem markets to work with Ericsson to use our capabilities to do those other things.”
Nokia claims to be doing the same at group level, in its own way. But the positioning is different, and Ericsson has a clearer narrative thread, about networks-first and networks-only, going through its whole business. More than this, it is starting to pull the thread from the bottom, out via its enterprise business. Really, this is the story from Ericsson at MWC, also told at its pre-MWC event in London last month. Tamsons says: “The leadership team is super aligned [around enterprise]. It was no coincidence that half of the sessions in London were about enterprises. So this is highly strategic; it is not an experiment.” Nokia is not telling that top-down story so well, if at all.
She goes on: “Our role is to provide digital networks for industries. Telcos are key partners. But it will take massive effort to scale across industries. Which explains the approach with network APIs, and what we are doing with ADUNA – to change how we expose and monetize the network.” Ericsson’s group-level endeavours are being shepherded into the market on higher-grade 5G systems in enterprises. Private 5G has emerged as a shrunk-down commercial testbed, in ways, for everything big-telecoms has talked about for five years. The whole group, it claims, is geared to make 5G work for small-telecoms, in ways that eventually scale across the whole global economy.
“Yes, it is an internal testbed [for Ericsson]; but more than that, it is a testbed for enterprises – to realize what this technology can do for them now, and not just in the future.” Testbed is the wrong term, maybe; the sense is more that Ericsson thinks private networks offer the first proper growth platform for programmable 5G tech. Indeed, there is a new buzz about private 5G at MWC. Tamsons talks about “the amazing Dr Gao” from the National University Hospital (NUH) in Singapore, appearing in slides and talks at MWC to showcase that most far-out 5G use case: remote surgery. “He is here to advocate for 5G as critical infrastructure in hospitals,” she says.
Gao’s team is using private 5G to support various medical tools and innovations at NUH in Singapore; he has an arrangement, also, to provide “assisted remote surgery” expertise to a hospital in Ghana. “This industry has talked about remote surgery for years, right?” His story is available elsewhere online; the point is the market can now show the proof for the most outrageous use case this industry ever came up with. “Yes, totally. We have had tests in labs for a decade – since way before the technology was available. And now, in 2025, we are talking about how 5G can change healthcare.” All the crazy hype about private 5G has found root, then.
But really, the mood in the Ericsson camp, and at MWC and in the market at large, is that the technology has matured, and the business is strong. Which is what Nokia has said for years, even as it is frustrated it is not stronger.
