Ekholm Maintains Focus on European 5G Lag

Speaking at Ericsson Shareholder Dialogue, President and CEO, Börje Ekholm, summarized the company's focused business strategy, its financial performance and the measures taken to handle the global pandemic during 2020. He used a meeting to reiterate previous warnings about the need to speed 5G deployments in Europe or risk lagging the US and China.

Ekholm explained Europe was coming from behind on 5G because of a legacy lag from 4G, and explained political action is needed to speed deployments of the next-generation tech. “Of course, Europe will benefit from applications developed on top of 5G networks, but these applications will be created where the networks are first deployed,“ Ekholm explained. “Thus, this is a question of future job growth. One example is that Europe was 2-3 years behind North America and China in deploying 4G and today we see very few digital champions in Europe.“

Ekholm’s focus on 5G has been a key theme so far in 2021, with the executive already warning of a lack of incentive for operators to deploy the technology and a knock-on effect for the region’s industry and economy.  He said that Ericsson will continue to seek the great growth opportunities in the enterprise segment, and explained an acquisition of US edge equipment company Cradlepoint in 2020 was a win-win for our customers since its solutions create new revenue streams for mobile network operators.