Ericsson Rides 5G Wave Across Asia, North America

Ericsson is riding a wave of 5G momentum and says its products are deployed in about two-thirds of all commercially launched 5G networks to date. “5G is rapidly gaining momentum around the world and 5G is now launched in four continents,” CEO Borje Ekholm said during an earnings call with analysts. Most of Ericsson’s network operator customers are engaging with the vendor on 5G and that’s a big change from a few quarters ago, Ekholm said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. Ericsson’s total sales grew 7% during the second quarter and revenue in Ericsson’s networks division grew 11% year-over-year, driven largely by network deployments in North America and northeast Asia where the earliest 5G networks got off the ground. “We continue to invest in our 5G portfolio, both in radio as well as in our cloud native core portfolio and digital services,” Ekholm said, adding that the company’s cloud native 5G core is gaining traction. Earlier this week, Ericsson and Verizon detailed results of a container-based evolved packet core (EPC) technology trial running on a live network. While the cloud-native technology was deployed on Verizon’s existing 4G LTE mobile core, the trial was positioned as a precursor to making those capabilities commercially available on a 5G network riding on a 5G mobile core.