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Erik Ekudden

Senior Vice President, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Ericsson

Search every verified Erik Ekudden interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. At the Mobile World Congress 2025, Erik Ekudden discussed the concept of "digital airspace," which he said Ericsson has been working on for many years. He stated that the technology has matured globally and can address problems in civilian, mission-critical, and defense sectors. Ekudden described digital airspace as a business opportunity that extends beyond connectivity, incorporating 3D positioning and population density knowledge. He noted that technology is not the limiting factor and called for countries to compete in adopting these capabilities, which he linked to driverless vehicles, logistics, and automated drones. He also said that with AI ran and 6G, the radio network becomes a distributed AI computer, and that "everything that moves will be robotic." At the India Mobile Congress 2025, Ekudden said that small and medium businesses, enterprises, hospitals, and manufacturing are adopting 5G, and that AI applications in smartphones moving into glasses will place new demands on networks. He credited India's government with enabling the world's fastest 5G rollout through forward-looking spectrum decisions. Ekudden noted Ericsson's long presence in India since 1903 and its expanded portfolio work in Bangalore, Chennai, and Gurgaon, including cloud-native systems, IP and transport evolution, and network AI. He also discussed network API ecosystems as a way to help operators monetize 5G investments, and highlighted innovations such as 5G-powered ECG sensors for democratizing healthcare.

Recent appearances

Notable quotes

“Yes it can. I think we've already shown that you can increase spectral efficiency. You can increase or reduce power consumption increase power efficiency by significant amounts 10 15 20%. And of course on on uh kind of on a network scale that that is significant saving.”

“I think it comes in two parts. One is really how do you ensure that AI is not consuming more power, not using more resources than it needs. And of course as we move from training typically in large data centers out to generation or AI inference towards the edge towards the devices, you need to use smaller more fit-for-purpose models.”

“We can improve the efficiency how much information you can stack in one piece of radio spectrum by 10%. In other ways, when you paid it for one amount of money, you now can get 10% more space in that. That's a huge value that is now being unleashed thanks to using AI in a very core part of our products and that's for the benefit of the users.”

“AI is already powering 5G networks today. But I think back to the discussion here in Davos, it's been very much about the ROI of AI. It's very much about diffusion of AI and I think those are hugely important because the most advanced companies now they get the return on the investments and we're starting to see more AI applications, agentic flows permeating throughout enterprises.”

“So think about that best network for AI that itself needs to be AI powered energy consumption, better user experience, better total cost of ownership, simpler to create new services on the fly. AI is already powering the 5G network. So you have AI powered 5G networks.”

“That is really what the industry needs, the industry doesn't need to hunker down and look at what was good in the last year. So industry needs to look forward and of course embrace AI as the opportunity to grow the business and there I think India can really take a lead and and be at the forefront.”

Other executives at Ericsson

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