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

Send us a text

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. 

Episode Transcript

Erik Ekudden (00:00):
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 amI'm gonna interview you.
We're just gonna have a chat.
But the chat is actually gonnabe about what we experience now
over a couple of days here.

(00:20):
So to me it's very much aboutthe energy.

Leonard Lee (00:23):
Yeah.

Erik Ekudden (00:23):
The growth opportunities.
It's not so much about newtechnology this time.
It's about down to earth,perhaps business business models
in some cases.
Also about leveraging the thingsthat we've had, at least in the
leading customers, the leadingoperate network for some time.
And then I think we should touchupon the network APIs and the
Aona venture.

Leonard Lee (00:43):
energized or, and this is gonna be great because,
you know, out of that exhaustionis gonna come out something I'm
sure pretty wonderful.
So, I think it's about gettingback to basics and then tuning
into what it is that 5G is aboutright?
And, in fact, I talked toseveral carriers on the floor.
They were talking about 5Gfinally.
Again, actually it's been absentin conversation for quite some

(01:06):
time and now, yeah, I thinkthere's now an interest in a
critical technology that I thinkhas been detrimentally,
disregarded.
I think, And, a lot of that hasto do with, initial maybe
exaggerated promises or untimelypromises.
And then now we're in asituation where we have all this
technology that's just piling upbehind a thing called 5G sa.

(01:29):
Yeah.
And, we're also in a differenttime, right.
we have a lot more handsets outthere.
Very true that are 5G capable.
We didn't have that before.
And so this is a whole newopportunity frontier for
operators to revisit the 5Gopportunity and then really
reevaluate well what does itmean for

Erik Ekudden (01:48):
us to invest in the 5G?
And I think there's a lot ofreevaluation going on here.
So one thing is that someoperators in the lead markets
lead investments, they arereally benefiting from 5G in the
consumer space.
There's no doubt it's a successactually in in those leading
market.
But if you go to other cases.
Enterprises is coming onlinenow.
Homes like fixed wirelessaccess.

(02:08):
Is a booming business is growingas a fastest access technology.
Yeah, it's great.
And you see it in the missioncritical public safety.
You see it even in defense now.
It's really the time to see that5G with the standalone
capability is that vehicle tocreate new business growth.
So I think that's really what wetry to show here and you'll be
the judge of it.
But, switching to the topic ofnetwork APIs and if this

(02:30):
programmability.

Leonard Lee (02:31):
Yeah,

Erik Ekudden (02:32):
it's gonna be used by anyone outside of our
industry.
We have to simplify, we have tomake it available.
We have to make it clear that anumber of developer platforms,
Ericsson Swan platform, but alsoother development platforms,
they are able to create servicesbasically everywhere in the
world.
Right.
And independent of whichoperator the user is using for

(02:53):
the moment.

Leonard Lee (02:54):
Absolutely.

Erik Ekudden (02:54):
And that's really where the.
Aona Enterprise or the Anunaventure comes in.
So what's your take?
how are we doing on thatgathering?
Speed.
can I tell you that you missedout

Leonard Lee (03:03):
on something, an important thought?
Oh, yeah.
It's called trust, and I thinkthat's essential.
if you think about it, you'rebasically channeling, network
capabilities from a wide rangeof operators who might be.
operating in different marketsunder different regulatory
regimes.
Absolutely.
And how do you foster trust?

(03:25):
And that's very expensiveexercise.
It's not a static thing.
It's always changing, especiallythese days.
And so how do you orchestrateand manage that, ensure that
consent and, regulatorypolicies, security policies,
trust policies, are institutedso that the developer doesn't
have to think about any of thatstuff.
And then when it gets exposed upto the development platform

(03:48):
layer as you described, how doyou, 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 functionsas 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 aplatform, right?

(04:10):
An exchange platform thatbasically settles and clears
these APIs transactions, butthen also foundationally applies
that quality of trust, which Ithink that's gonna be a
challenging thing for the Dunateam, but it's gonna be
something that's extremelyvaluable for the entire industry
at a global level.

(04:31):
Yeah.

Erik Ekudden (04:31):
It's a great observation and I think as we
see, there's more operatorscoming on board.
So I do nice growing when itcomes to the operator network
side, but also to your pointabout.
How can these developers beassured that it is to some
level, that these services willbe available?
So it's trust in terms ofavailability as well.
And these are real timeservices, many of them.

(04:52):
So it better be there when youneed it.
It can't be available sometimeslater.
So sure, there's a lot oftransactions, but there's also a
lot of trust that you need tohave in the platform.
Well, that's actually a great,Segue into sort of what's next
there.
Here we are showing a lot ofpartnerships.
I think we can scale them aroundthe world.
Mm-hmm.
These are early customers thathave commercial traction now,

(05:12):
many of them using networkcapabilities over network APIs,
some of them being more in thenetwork slice capabilities, some
of them being more in terms ofadvanced positioning or other
services.
And what's your take on the nextstep here?
What should we, we be focusingon?
focus on the valuable simplestuff.
Hmm.
Right.
Like what the banks are askingfor the financial services fraud

(05:33):
prevention transactions.
Yeah.
Why not?
Why do you have to make itcomplicated?
But those are available as youknow.

Leonard Lee (05:38):
So these, these are things that are ready to escape,
but those are, those are thethings 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 moreparticipating operators coming
in with more of the 5G essay,like.
more advanced five, or let'scall it just true, you know, I

(06:00):
don't wanna call it true 5G, butyeah.
Real 5G the capabilities andfeatures, then it's just going
to, yeah.
raise the, then that demand isthere.
I mean, and you know, it's nothypothetical.
I mean, right now we have aserious backlog.
Look at what three 3G PP we'reon, like, what release 18, and
then now during, going into the19 cycle, think about all those

(06:23):
features that you know.
A lot of operators can'tcapitalize on consumers as well
as enterprises can't leverage.
And so there's huge opportunityand it's reality.
it's not hypothetical.

Erik Ekudden (06:34):
Yeah.
Great.
And, thanks for the view on theindustry, Leonard.
I think, yeah, as you pointedout, this is perhaps the biggest
untapped potential for.
Our customers for enterprises,for governments, for countries.
Because if you combine this witha strong AI proposition, a
strong sovereign cloudproposition, that advanced
connectivity with 5G is actuallydoing wonders when it comes to

(06:58):
digitalizations acrossindustries and countries.
So yeah, big thanks for yourreflections and thanks for the
partnership.