Mobile Networks, Greatest Drivers of GDP in History: Ericsson

“It is one of the greatest drivers of economic growth and human equality the world has ever seen.” - Ericsson President and CEO Börje Ekholm takes a deeper look at what to expect from the next generation of mobile networks, and what we need to do to enable the full power of 5G.

In his essay for the World Economic Forum (WEF) published on January 12, Ekholm says mobile networks are one of the greatest drivers of GDP in history and no other technology has ever scaled as fast.

As we sit amid the next mobile revolution, 5G, it is timely to not only look back at how quickly mobile technology has scaled through the generations, but look forward to how this next generation will impact lives, business and society moving forward.

Ekholm states that if previous generations of mobile communications were built for human interactions, 5G is also built specifically for machines. The technology offers the lower latency required to open up a whole host of new uses not possible from 4G.

Elaborating on what this means for industry and society, the CEO says it provides the potential to create a fundamental change in the same way that mobile broadband not only changed consumer behavior but created entirely new businesses and business models. He goes on to illustrate the effect this will have on industry, as an example, saying that every phase of the manufacturing process will benefit from the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT).

Importantly, Ekholm outlines the need for global spectrum harmonization and the increasingly important role that governments will play in setting the laws and regulatory framework required to enable the technology to move forward with pace.