Ericsson Technology Review 2023 issue 2
The ongoing digitalization occurring all around the globe is profoundly changing the way both individuals and organizations consume products and services. As impressive as this transformation has been, I believe that what we have seen so far is just the beginning.
Ericsson CTO Erik Ekudden on the creation of a truly open and business-innovation-friendly network platform
The ongoing digitalization occurring all around the globe is profoundly changing the way both individuals and organizations consume products and services. As impressive as this transformation has been, I believe that what we have seen so far is just the beginning. The emergence of increasingly sophisticated cloud and artificial intelligence technologies, programmable networks, application programming interface exposure and as-a-service business models all point toward the rapidly growing need for an open platform for business innovation.
At Ericsson, we are confident that 5G will evolve into the network infrastructure of choice. There is simply no other communication technology that can efficiently deliver the required openness, scale and affordability. Based on this conviction, we are working closely with our standardization partners to create a truly open and business-innovation-friendly network platform that links consumers, enterprises and society at large with seamless and efficient connectivity and differentiated communication services. By minimizing both cost and resource usage, the future network platform will also play a key role in helping society and industry to reach net-zero emissions and other sustainability goals.
If you are curious to know more about my vision for the future of digitalization, check out my annual technology trends article in this issue. In it, I present the three key trends for 2023 and chart the course toward achieving next-level digitalization – that is, the creation of a connected and sustainable physical world that is both digitalized and programmable.
This issue of our magazine also contains four other articles that are closely connected to the theme of next-level digitalization. Two of them focus on the critically important topic of extended reality (XR). The first one, explores the network requirements of the most likely future XR applications and defines a set of XR flavors to serve as samples in the expected requirements range. In the second XR article, the same team of experts examines the traffic characteristics of XR applications and explains the qualitative effects they have on both coverage and capacity.
Aside from XR support, next-level digitalization also requires ubiquitous connectivity, which is where satellite connectivity comes in. The article provides an overview of satellite technology and explains the use cases, service requirements and business rationales for integrating a satellite component based on the 3GPP ecosystem into 5G Advanced and 6G mobile network systems.
Of course, next-level digitalization also requires a high degree of autonomous operations, which is best achieved through the use of intents. In the article, a team of Ericsson experts explains how to use intent-based interfaces to achieve autonomous operation, addressing key concepts such as decision making based on utility maximization and the use of digital twins for safe, automated exploration of solution alternatives.
I hope that you enjoy this issue of Ericsson Technology Review and find it useful in your work. Please feel free to share it with your colleagues and business partners. You can find both PDF and HTML versions of all the articles here.
Erik Ekudden, CTO Ericsson
