BARCELONA – Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson is bullish on the opportunities being presented by the growth in mobile data.

Speaking at a press conference during the GSMA Mobile World Congress held recently in Barcelona, Vestberg said that as the mobile phone industry gains to attracts three billion new mobile broadband subscribers and delivers billions of new content-rich applications, Ericsson sees mobile phone traffic to grow by a factor of 50, noting that the past decade had seen the number of mobile subscriptions worldwide grow sixfold to 4.6 billion.

“Mobile broadband has had its breakthrough and we believe that we will see three billion new mobile broadband subscriptions in the next five years,” Vestberg says.

The new Ericsson CEO forecasts that by 2015 mobile PC subscriptions will have grown six times and the traffic generated will grow more than 50 times compared with the end of 2009. During the same time, he expects smartphone devices to grow four times, with the amount of data traffic they will generate to grow more than 25 times.

By 2020, Vestberg said, he envisions a world where some 50 billion connected devices. “A world where patients will be remotely connected to hospitals, trucks will be online with logistics centers for efficient routing, and city students will be connected to students in rural villages halfway around the world.”

He said to date, several operators have already established machine-to-machine departments to meet these demands.

However, Vestberg said that in order to see this come to fruition, Ericsson would have to move from being a traditional telecom to IP, from hardware to software and from network rollouts to network evolution. “The industry's future success depended on applications and sorting out problems, rather than technology,” he said.

He said that HSPA and 4G/LTE will enable the 50 billion connected devices and the continued traffic growth.

LTE, the next generation of mobile communication technology, enables the fast transfer of huge amounts of data in an efficient and cost-effective way, optimizing the use of the frequency spectrum.

With increased speed and decreased latency, consumers can enjoy a wide range of applications (real-time web, online gaming, social media collaboration and video conferencing) effortlessly and while on the move. LTE will meet the demands of new and enhanced mobile internet applications of the future.

Vestberg said Ericsson have established technology leadership and scale advantages in this area, with several leading operators in the world today awarding to Ericsson the opportunity to deliver their 4G/LTE networks. “The overall LTE package with products and services we officer is very competitive. We have taken these products to mass production and can manufacture on a large scale, which is a clear competitive advantage. The competition is fierce, but we can have grounds for having good self-confidence.”

Following the recent win with AT&T Ericsson now supplies its 4G/LTE solutions to operators that have a total of some 240 million subscribers.

"In 2009 we significantly strengthened our position in North America. The rationale for the acquisition of the Nortel CDMA and LTE operations was to extend our footprint, expand customer relationships and gain a profitable CDMA business in North America. As the integration progresses, we are seeing opportunities for further CDMA business also outside North America.

"As the industry again moves into new territories, our role as a vendor must shift from just being a technology and services supplier to being a business enabler. Operators are looking to us to manage the increasing complexity of their networks so they can concentrate on enhancing the user experience. Our continued success in this area shows the value of our services offering. We will have to combine our strong technology leadership position and services capabilities to provide value to our customers. We have to drive innovation in both technology and business models," concluded Vestberg.

At the GSMA Mobile World Congress, Ericsson set a world record by showcasing LTE/4G with a speed of 1 gigabit per second in the downlink.

This world first demonstration is utilizing Multi Carrier technology and Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output, MIMO, and runs on Ericsson commercial LTE hardware. By combining these technologies, speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second are possible. The demonstration uses four carriers of 20MHz each, totally 80MHz and 4x4 MIMO, data is sent over the air-interface on four independent bit-streams.