The telco industry is facing an aggressive deadline for 5G, which is creating a balancing act of priorities for operators, an Ericsson executive has claimed.
In a video interview at last week’s 5G World event in London, Hans Mickelsson, Director, Systems and Technology, Ericsson, said the clock is ticking on 5G with some operators planning to set up networks by 2018 ahead of its wider commercialisation in 2020.
He said this creates a tension between those wanting to ensure the technology is ideal and those wanting to meet their companies’ deadline.
He said: “Then there are technical things [that we need to work on]. We need to simplify it, make it easier to deploy new services. Today it can take months to deploy transport services. That is not sustainable in a new future.”
Elsewhere, Mikelsson discussed how Ericsson has been working with non-telco players such as automotive manufacturers to determine the best use cases and demands for 5G.
He also discussed how network slicing, a key part of Ericsson’s 5G strategy, gives operators a “sandbox” to experiment with new kinds of services.
You can watch the video in full below. In the coming days, Mobile Europe will publish interviews with executives from EE and Qualcomm. You can watch yesterday’s video interview with Deutsche Telekom’s Antje Williams here.