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Ericsson’s 5G technologies are ready for commercialization and will start shipping to the company’s partners later this year, President and Chief Executive Officer Börje Ekholm said while opening the firm’s demonstration area at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Like many other experts in the field, the industry veteran is predicting a bright future for 5G that it expects will allow for the creation of entirely new technologies, business models, and companies, eventually transforming the global economy as a whole. Those seeking to profit from 5G must focus on what Mr. Ekholm defined as the three key areas of future connectivity: digital experience, efficiency, and creating new revenue streams.
The latter goal should be the easiest to achieve, with 5G by itself already being created with use cases in mind, unlike every other wireless generation that came before it. Instead of focusing on delivering improved speeds, capacities, and latencies for the sake of doing so and letting the rest of the tech industry figure out how to leverage them, 5G research and development started by trying to determine what kind of speeds, latencies, and capacities companies need to enable highly defined use cases such as self-driving cars, remote surgery, and advanced IoT applications. The tailor-made approach should also allow wireless carriers to bring down the overall cost of delivering a gigabyte of data and pass those savings to consumers, Mr. Ekholm believes, concluding that the fifth generation of mobile networks should ultimately benefit everyone, from private users to major enterprises.
Several weeks back, Ericsson completed its commercial 5G platform, revising it in accordance with the first implementable 5G standard completed by the 3GPP late last year. The end-to-end solution will become available to network operators in the final quarter of the year, with the Stockholm, Sweden-based tech giant hoping to have its infrastructural equipment at the forefront of the next wireless revolution. Telstra CEO Andy Penn also made an appearance at Ericsson’s MWC 2018 conference to talk about the Australian telecom giant’s partnership with the firm and stress the importance of an early 5G push due to its implications for the long-term sustainability of network tech pioneers. Large-scale commercial deployment of 5G infrastructure is expected to start early next year in the United States, Australia, and select Far Eastern countries.