Jacqueline Hey, head of Ericsson UK, is the woman in the Ericsson hot seat. She has the responsibility of ensuring that Ericsson delivers a solid performance in the run up to, and during, the 2012 Games.
In order to ensure that operators can provide for the billions of fans watching the Games, she says it is essential that everyone begins preparing now.
“Before the current games started we met with one of our customers to let them know we are already working towards London 2012,” she says. “It takes years of hard work for Olympic winners to achieve their goals, and we have to do the same if we are going to be ahead of the field come London 2012.
“Ericsson has worked on the three previous Olympics, not to mention other world sporting events, so we know we have a great offering for our customers.
“Once the Beijing Olympics is over, we will sit down with all of our customers to show them what we have done and what we will have to do in the next four years.”
In consumer terms, the London 2012 Games are also likely to be radically different from Beijing 2008 as to how people will access information – whether through vision, sound, or the written word.
She says this means planning for the unknown.
“London 2012 will be the digital games,” she says. “We will have to provide and support multimedia applications that we haven’t even thought of today. This makes creating a master plan difficult, but it also makes it exciting.
“We believe this will be the first Olympic Games that users will be able to completely have in their pockets with them all the time, to access from anywhere. We have the technology for this already, but just imagine how much faster and accessible the technology will be in the next four years.”
She can also draw on personal experience as part of the planning and strategic thinking for the Games.
“I was in Sydney working for Ericsson when the Olympic Games were there in 2000,” she says. “In terms of traffic, it was like New Year’s Eve every night for two weeks in a row. It’s quite a strain and a stress on the network, but it’s one that we can handle if we begin working together now.”
