MWC 2025: A chat with Erik Ekudden, CTO of Ericsson

This was one of the highlights of MWC 2025 for neXt Curve. Leonard Lee, Executive Analyst of neXt Curve, was invited by Ericsson to have chat with one of the industry’s tech luminaries, Erik Ekudden, CTO of Ericsson. It was great to get the essence of our ongoing conversations about the industry, tech leadership, and the reinvention of the network in a 5G era and beyond.

Erik and Leonard hit on some serious topics important to the industry with a nice mix of levity. We didn’t know where the conversation would go but we knew we had to start with a view on where we are with 5G.

It’s really time to unleash the backlog of 5G technologies waiting to deliver on the promises of 5G yet unrealized which I have been advocating in neXt Curve for a least two years now. 

Transcript

Erik Ekudden: 0:00

So we are day three in the afternoon, mobile World Congress 2025. And I'm completely exhausted, except I have the opportunity to discuss with you Leonard. So great to have you. Good to have you. Good to be here. Yeah. Are you gonna interview me or am I'm gonna interview you. We're just gonna have a chat. But the chat is actually gonna be about what we experience now over a couple of days here. So to me it's very much about the energy.

Leonard Lee: 0:23

Yeah.

Erik Ekudden: 0:23

The growth opportunities. It's not so much about new technology this time. It's about down to earth, perhaps business business models in some cases. Also about leveraging the things that we've had, at least in the leading customers, the leading operate network for some time. And then I think we should touch upon the network APIs and the Aona venture.

Leonard Lee: 0:43

energized or, and this is gonna be great because, you know, out of that exhaustion is gonna come out something I'm sure pretty wonderful. So, I think it's about getting back to basics and then tuning into what it is that 5G is about right? And, in fact, I talked to several carriers on the floor. They were talking about 5G finally. Again, actually it's been absent in conversation for quite some time and now, yeah, I think there's now an interest in a critical technology that I think has been detrimentally, disregarded. I think, And, a lot of that has to do with, initial maybe exaggerated promises or untimely promises. And then now we're in a situation where we have all this technology that's just piling up behind a thing called 5G sa. Yeah. And, we're also in a different time, right. we have a lot more handsets out there. Very true that are 5G capable. We didn't have that before. And so this is a whole new opportunity frontier for operators to revisit the 5G opportunity and then really reevaluate well what does it mean for

Erik Ekudden: 1:48

us to invest in the 5G? And I think there's a lot of reevaluation going on here. So one thing is that some operators in the lead markets lead investments, they are really benefiting from 5G in the consumer space. There's no doubt it's a success actually in in those leading market. But if you go to other cases. Enterprises is coming online now. Homes like fixed wireless access. Is a booming business is growing as a fastest access technology. Yeah, it's great. And you see it in the mission critical public safety. You see it even in defense now. It's really the time to see that 5G with the standalone capability is that vehicle to create new business growth. So I think that's really what we try to show here and you'll be the judge of it. But, switching to the topic of network APIs and if this programmability.

Leonard Lee: 2:31

Yeah,

Erik Ekudden: 2:32

it's gonna be used by anyone outside of our industry. We have to simplify, we have to make it available. We have to make it clear that a number of developer platforms, Ericsson Swan platform, but also other development platforms, they are able to create services basically everywhere in the world. Right. And independent of which operator the user is using for the moment.

Leonard Lee: 2:54

Absolutely.

Erik Ekudden: 2:54

And that's really where the. Aona Enterprise or the Anuna venture comes in. So what's your take? how are we doing on that gathering? Speed. can I tell you that you missed out

Leonard Lee: 3:03

on something, an important thought? Oh, yeah. It's called trust, and I think that's essential. if you think about it, you're basically channeling, network capabilities from a wide range of operators who might be. operating in different markets under different regulatory regimes. Absolutely. And how do you foster trust? And that's very expensive exercise. It's not a static thing. It's always changing, especially these days. And so how do you orchestrate and manage that, ensure that consent and, regulatory policies, security policies, trust policies, are instituted so that the developer doesn't have to think about any of that stuff. And then when it gets exposed up to the development platform layer as you described, how do you, how do you take the risk out of that? Because if you don't have trust, there's no liquidity, which is where I think a douna functions as this exchange. Right? A lot of people like to say, ah, it's an aggregator, but it separates the marketplace. From the function of being a platform, right? An exchange platform that basically settles and clears these APIs transactions, but then also foundationally applies that quality of trust, which I think that's gonna be a challenging thing for the Duna team, but it's gonna be something that's extremely valuable for the entire industry at a global level. Yeah.

Erik Ekudden: 4:31

It's a great observation and I think as we see, there's more operators coming on board. So I do nice growing when it comes to the operator network side, but also to your point about. How can these developers be assured that it is to some level, that these services will be available? So it's trust in terms of availability as well. And these are real time services, many of them. So it better be there when you need it. It can't be available sometimes later. So sure, there's a lot of transactions, but there's also a lot of trust that you need to have in the platform. Well, that's actually a great, Segue into sort of what's next there. Here we are showing a lot of partnerships. I think we can scale them around the world. Mm-hmm. These are early customers that have commercial traction now, many of them using network capabilities over network APIs, some of them being more in the network slice capabilities, some of them being more in terms of advanced positioning or other services. And what's your take on the next step here? What should we, we be focusing on? focus on the valuable simple stuff. Hmm. Right. Like what the banks are asking for the financial services fraud prevention transactions. Yeah. Why not? Why do you have to make it complicated? But those are available as you know.

Leonard Lee: 5:38

So these, these are things that are ready to escape, but those are, those are the things that are going to hydrate the economics of all of this. I think that's a great start, actually, right? Yeah. Yeah. And you know, once you have more participating operators coming in with more of the 5G essay, like. more advanced five, or let's call it just true, you know, I don't wanna call it true 5G, but yeah. Real 5G the capabilities and features, then it's just going to, yeah. raise the, then that demand is there. I mean, and you know, it's not hypothetical. I mean, right now we have a serious backlog. Look at what three 3G PP we're on, like, what release 18, and then now during, going into the 19 cycle, think about all those features that you know. A lot of operators can't capitalize on consumers as well as enterprises can't leverage. And so there's huge opportunity and it's reality. it's not hypothetical.

Erik Ekudden: 6:34

Yeah. Great. And, thanks for the view on the industry, Leonard. I think, yeah, as you pointed out, this is perhaps the biggest untapped potential for. Our customers for enterprises, for governments, for countries. Because if you combine this with a strong AI proposition, a strong sovereign cloud proposition, that advanced connectivity with 5G is actually doing wonders when it comes to digitalizations across industries and countries. So yeah, big thanks for your reflections and thanks for the partnership.