Written by: Andreas Grundsell and Karin Mallmin

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Building the third-generation network infrastructures needed for mobile Internet services will require the production and delivery of base stations and network nodes in very large volumes. At the same time, the demand for infrastructure equipment for GSM and other second-generation networks will continue to grow as existing networks expand to cope with the twin pressures of subscriber growth and traffic growth.
The supply processes that have brought the mobile communications industry this far will not be adequate to cope with the extreme market demand for equipment for second- and third-generation infrastructure. This is why Ericsson is developing supply concepts that have a lot in common with the techniques used in large-volume businesses, such as the automotive and consumer-electronic-goods sectors. In this article, the authors focus on the likely impact of market growth on the supply flow, and profile the supply management initiatives being taken by Ericsson to meet the expected demand from mobile network operators.
[First published in Ericsson Review no. 02, 2001]