- Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm praised the U.S. telecom market but warned it lags China in rolling out 5G standalone
- He largely sidestepped a question about the viability of EchoStar as a fourth U.S. facilities-based operator
- Ekholm highlighted spectrum and AI as critical to future network innovation and competitiveness
Ericsson President and CEO Börje Ekholm appeared very much at home during a fireside chat at the Technology Policy Institute’s annual Aspen Forum this week – as well he should, having a home not that far away in the Vail Valley of Colorado.
It’s a fitting place for the CEO of the Stockholm, Sweden-based Ericsson to sing the praises of the U.S. and its productivity in telecom, even though it’s no longer home to any major telecom infrastructure vendor.
In recent years, the biggest U.S. wireless operators relied mostly on a combination of Nokia and Ericsson. But Verizon started phasing Nokia out a few years ago in favor of Samsung (while retaining Ericsson) and AT&T named Ericsson as its lead Open RAN vendor in 2023. T-Mobile remains the only U.S. carrier of the Big 3 that uses both Ericsson and Nokia.
Ekholm stressed that the U.S. as a technology hub remains critically important for Ericsson. His company sells its products in more than 170 countries, but “I would say our most important market is the U.S.,” he said. “It’s a large market, but it also has front-runner customers. If we’re going to lead on innovation, we need to work with front-runner customers.”
Looking back, U.S.-based vendors (we’re reminded of Lucent here) tried different paths, including CDMA, which was the backbone of some of the American leaders in telecom (think Verizon), but CDMA never reached global scale. “Business scale is what matters,” he said.
Ekholm didn’t comment on a question populating a lot of minds these days: whether the U.S. should have three or four facilities-based carriers, nor was he asked that question. But indirectly, he was asked about EchoStar’s chances of succeeding in the U.S. market. EchoStar, aka Dish Network ask Boost Mobile, built its 5G network from scratch using Open RAN – and Ericsson is not a vendor.
“It’s hard for me to comment,” he said. “But most big markets have three to four operators. The U.S. has three very big [operators] and EchoStar, and I think what they need to do is to be disruptive.”
That’s not necessarily just being disruptive on how they build their network. “It’s actually on your offerings. What do you target, what do you sell to? Then I think there is an opportunity. This market can clearly be large enough,” he said.
Ericsson CEO on 5G SA
Despite his upbeat remarks about the U.S., he noted that it’s still behind China in the rollout of 5G Standalone (SA), the “true 5G” technology that many operators delayed in favor of the more expedient 5G non-Standalone (NSA), which relies on LTE at the core and enables operators to harness their 4G networks before jumping solely to 5G.
That delay in moving to 5G SA is a problem, according to Ekholm. “China has built the world leading 5G standalone network,” he said, noting it has deployed about 4 million 5G SA base stations. “They are now starting to build new applications leveraging the capabilities in the network,” such as factory robotics that can be deployed much more economically.
Only one large U.S. operator – T-Mobile – has announced a nationwide 5G SA deployment and “they have actually monetized as well,” he said. Otherwise, ‘if you ask most customers, they will say they struggle to monetize 5G and the reason for that is most operators around the world have really built out 5G non-standalone” and they’re still struggling to make money from 5G.
US as spectrum leader – in 4G
Spectrum came up during the discussion as well as it looks like China may be hosting the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference where many big global spectrum decisions are made.
Ekholm said there needs to be strong Western representation there and noted the importance of licensed spectrum to ensure security, reliability and availability for mobile operators.
“You really need licensed spectrum. It’s very hard to do in unlicensed because you simply don’t know what devices are going to come into the equation,” he said. “If you’re going to have a humanoid or a robot or a self-driving vehicle that’s going to be relying on connectivity, it has to be truly reliable. You can’t allow milliseconds of interruptions.”
Therefore, the next generation of automation, whether it’s using AI or another means of automation, is going to require connectivity and a reliable spectrum pipeline.
“I do believe the U.S. has historically been a leader of spectrum,” he said. “Think about 4G, for example. It was very well managed in the U.S. and actually probably put the U.S. at the leading edge here on platform companies because they could develop on top of that 4G network. Repeating that in 6G, I think, will be important.”
AI in the network
What’s a telecom story these days without a mention of AI? Ekholm was asked about AI’s role in the network.
Of course, it plays a major part. “AI is maybe the most fundamental technology we have seen so far, maybe the most for us as company and for us as a society, no doubt,” the CEO said. “Then you can debate if it’s hype or not. Doesn’t really matter. Everyone said the internet was hype in 2002. Twenty-five years later, I wouldn’t say this. I would say the impact is much bigger.”
Society tends to overestimate the impact of a one-year horizon and underestimate the impact of a 10-year horizon, he said.
“The impact is starting to be seen now. We see it in the way we operate networks,” he said. “We see already now efficiency gains, for example, on spectrum efficiency in some of the most optimized algorithms in a radio network.”
That said, “we can still do better with AI to get 10% more spectrum efficiency. It’s very meaningful. Then, of course, we run it in our operations. It will change fundamentally how we operate the company,” he said.
He acknowledged there will be job losses in certain job categories, “but there will be new job categories created,” he said.
In his view, the U.S. government’s strategy of having relatively loose regulation on AI is good compared to Europe. “I’m a big believer that regulation is needed in some shape or form, but when you regulate something before it has happened, you have to regulate so many of the possible outcomes that you will put a wet blanket on innovation, and that’s what is happening” in Europe, he said.
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