Ericsson was supposed to have a huge showing at MWC 2020 but they had withdrawn from the world’s biggest mobile show before GSMA pulled the plug. Instead, the Swedish telecommunications company has held a smaller “pre-MWC” event in London and they have emphasised its strong leadership in 5G with a total of 81 commercial contracts.
It was reported that Ericsson has refuted claims by mobile operators and industry observers that its 5G technology is inferior to Huawei. According to its Executive Vice President, Fredrik Jejdling, Ericsson has deployed 24 live networks worldwide in 14 countries and they are the first to deploy networks across four continents.
He added that it is hard to see anyone that’s ahead of Ericsson and they believe they have a competitive portfolio that is on par or ahead of their competitors. The executive also highlighted the company’s planned upgrades to its 5G core network and dynamic spectrum sharing technologies as evidence of its superiority. He also shared that significant advancements for 5G will be possible with the arrival of standalone 5G later this year.
With Huawei facing restrictions from the US government, it appears that Ericsson would have a better opportunity in several markets especially in the US. Huawei has repeatedly refuted allegations by the US government and argued that the ongoing ban will hurt US consumers as they will be forced to pay higher prices for inferior products.
It was reported that Ericsson has secured 79 5G commercial contracts at the end of 2019 versus 63 by Nokia and 50 by Huawei. In Malaysia, Ericsson is one of two key telecommunication partners for Celcom. In 2017, Celcom and Ericsson were the first to conduct 5G trials in Malaysia with speeds up to 18Gbps on the 28GHz band.
