Acute Spectrum Scarcity Looms–Ericsson

With 20 billion connected devices and 6.5 billion network users by 2020, Ericsson believes William Gibson’s prediction of the future might be misplaced and that in fact mobile future might not happen at all.

Ulf Ewaldsson, Ericsson’s CTO captured it all when he said that “the future, at least our connected, mobile future, might not happen at all”.

And as the chief technology officer of the most global of networking infrastructure providers, Ewaldsson is as well placed as anyone to peer into individual’s collective digital crystal ball.

The problem, Ewaldsson said, there will be a thousand fold increase in mobile traffic over the next five years and today’s 4G networks are not sufficiently muscular to handle this explosion in bandwidth demand. Spectrum, he predicts, will be “more scarce than oil in the 21st century”.

“And so it’s “very, very important,” Ewaldsson insists, “to undertake what he calls a “global alignment” on spectrum policy to ensure that the new demands on the network – from self driving cars to wearable intelligent devices – can be guaranteed as we eventually shift from a 4G to a 5G world”.

That is the bad news. The good news, however, Ewaldsson noted, is that a lot of people, including Ericsson themselves, are working on making sure that our connected future actually happens. Indeed, the Swedish networking company invests $5 billion a year in R&D and is particularly interested in startups in the energy, healthcare, education and transportation sectors.

Ericsson is the world’s leading provider of technology and services to telecom operators. Ericsson is the leader in 2G, 3G and 4G mobile technologies, and provides support for networks with over 2 billion subscribers and has the leading position in managed services.

The company’s portfolio comprises mobile and fixed network infrastructure, telecom services, software, broadband and multimedia solutions for operators, enterprises and the media industry.

The Sony Ericsson and ST-Ericsson joint ventures provide consumers with feature-rich personal mobile devices.