Ericsson remains a critical presence in the UK telecoms market, working with different ecosystem players and government bodies to support the acceleration of technologies like 5G Standalone (5G SA).

The company celebrated a milestone recently after signing a multibillion-pound agreement with VodafoneThree and Nokia to accelerate the delivery of its £11 billion investment programme.

At Ericsson’s Remixing 5G event earlier in the year, Capacity spoke with Blessing Makumbe, vice president and head of cloud software and services North Europe, and Luca Orsini, president Europe North, about the importance of collaboration to support infrastructure development and accelerate the 5G race.

“It’s about having the ecosystem together to stimulate 5G SA growth,” Orsini said. “That’s what we want to showcase.”

The path to accelerating 5G

A strong advocate of collaboration, Ericsson sees partnerships as vital for sustainable 5G development. With 5G SA undoubtedly making waves across the industry, it’s changing the way that the company works – but there’s still plenty of progress to come.

“We’re seeing right now in the UK that coverage is quite strong, at least outdoor coverage on 5G,” Makumbe explained. “Standalone coverage is getting there, but adoption is not strong yet. We’re still seeing single digit adoption, 2% when we measured in May, in the consumer market.”

To accelerate adoption, Ericsson is working with IBM and the UK Emergency Services Network to harness 5G technologies for life-saving purposes and first responders.

“It’s an ecosystem play, rather than just one participant who needs to make it work,” Makumbe added. “This is why it’s important for us to really showcase and stimulate the industry to continue with 5G, because we’re at a pivotal place.”

While operators in the UK now have clear milestones on 5G SA activation and commercialisation, Orsini still sees room for growth.

“I think we will continue to need to work together,” he said. “2030 or mid-2035 is still slightly behind what champions are doing outside [the UK], but I see a very positive momentum here.

“We need high-performing RAN networks, bandwidth and good coverage, including indoor and we obviously need a 5G core that supports slicing and differentiated connectivity.”

Unblocking practical barriers to 5G success

Although the market is making great strides to recognise continued digital transformation, both Makumbe and Orsini said collaboration is still in its infancy.

“I think we are still experimenting – commercial adoption of these collaborations is yet to come,” Orsini explained.

One way that Ericsson has looked to bridge the gap is via its Aduna consortium, which is now a global collective of communications organisations hoping to unify global network capabilities.

“Our creation of Aduna hopes to harmonise the exposure of APIs from the network – demonstrating that the incentive is to realise that uniting forces is very important to reposition telecoms within critical infrastructure,” Orsini said.

Companies across the UK have been running plenty of trials related to 5G SA, having showcased it in stadiums and broadcasting critical events to capture its value for customers. Ericsson recently ran a use case with a CSP where it provided multiple slices for payments for an event, which required plenty of trials.

Now, Makumbe has suggested that it could be time to move away from the trial mindset.

“The barrier is maybe the fear of if something will work or not and we should be looking at implementation goals and seeing something in production,” he said. “EE recently announced by 2030 they will have 5G SA in 99% coverage and VodafoneThree is working towards 2034 for 99.9% coverage. Virgin Media O2 is in the same boat.”

Ericsson’s ‘pivotal’ role in the UK market

Having operated in the UK for more than a century, Ericsson maintains a strong presence in propelling innovation within the industry forward.

Looking ahead, the company said it will continue to contribute to the industry, particularly when it comes to broader digitalisation efforts and improving efficiency in several industrial sectors. This is especially relevant when it comes to the country’s 6G journey.

“We are working very closely with government, academia and other enterprises to explore what 6G can be,” Orsini said. “It’s very important to start early on the capability, looking at the business requirements and developing technology.

“I think we are the backbone of the infrastructure in the UK and very present in helping operators deploy 5G networks and commercialising them.”

Makumbe added: “The technology leadership is there. We’re providing critical infrastructure in the UK, both in radio and the core network.

“Our role is pivotal and we hold that with high regard. You only need to look at our financial results, the UK remains a very important market for us as an organisation.”

But what about ROI?

Some of the key challenges in developing 5G that Ericsson confronted at Remixing 5G included investors being concerned over return on investment (ROI). With the common understanding that 5G SA can boost resilience and opportunity, there is a real need to see investment for digital capabilities in essential sectors across the UK.

These, according to Ericsson, require 5G SA as a foundation.

“We need to realise the full value that lies ahead. Enhanced experiences are undisputedly something that adds tremendous value, both on the monetisation for operators, but something that the end users are desperate for and in need of,” Makumbe said.

“It’s time for us as an industry together with our operators to move into differentiated services. The end users are showing they need it and we’ll see monetisation happening with our customers as well.”

Orsini added: “The big area for development is onboarding on the same infrastructure for different enterprises. This is an entire additional revenue stream that is not as price sensitive as the consumer. I can see this as the next wave of business development.”

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Image: Blessing Makumbe (left), Luca Orsini (right)