TORONTO – While he may have phoned in his keynote address to the Canadian Telecom Summit from Stockholm, Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg made much of the role Canada plays in the company’s research and development plans.
Speaking via a live video feed from Ericsson’s global headquarters, Vestberg (pictured) said: “Canada is playing an important role for us when it comes to research and development on many of [Ericsson’s] products.”
Vestberg used his opportunity to speak to Canadian Telecom Summit attendees to announce Ericsson’s plan to build a 40,000-square-metre data centre in the Montreal suburb of Vaudreuil-Dorion which will begin operations in early 2015. It will be one of only a few such data centres to be built globally by the company.
The idea is to bring together the company’s complete product portfolio in a single facility where Ericsson can innovate and test its equipment, and also do research and development on it, Vestberg said. At the same time, customers will also be allowed to use the data centre to do trials and tests on Ericsson equipment, he said.
Vestberg said, of the roughly US$5 billion Ericsson invests in R&D globally every year, about 80% is invested in network innovation. In addition, Ericsson invests heavily in OSS/BSS (operations support systems/business support systems) and process transformation, he added. Other technology areas of focus for Ericsson include mobile payment, IPTV, and machine-to-machine platforms in the cloud, Vestberg said.
Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report, also released Monday morning, indicates the global adoption of smartphones and 4G networks is helping to drive tremendous growth in video traffic, which is increasing by 60% annually.
During his keynote address, Vestberg expanded on the Mobility Report, saying 4G network adoption is particularly high in North America, Korea and Japan, which represents a shift from the previous trend of high penetration of 3G networks in Europe.
Vestberg offered some shorter-term predictions for the mobile market, saying that by year-end 2013 about 50% of all mobile phones shipped globally will be smartphones. Mobile broadband subscriptions are expected to top 2 billion by the end of the year, he added. Also by the end of 2013, smartphone users will be consuming 20MB of data per day on average.
