VIDEO INTERVIEW: 5G needs to provide a “totally different experience” to 4G, with development this time centred on machines, and not the smartphone, believes Ulf Ewaldsson, chief technology officer at Ericsson.

Ewaldsson, speaking to Mobile World Live in an exclusive interview, described 4G as the “technology for the massive smartphone deployment”, with standards designed to create “a little bit of a simpler system through higher downlink speeds, higher capacity and higher capabilities”.

With Ericsson projecting penetration of more than 6 billion smartphones in the global market in the next five years, he believes 4G will continue to play “an instrumental role for a long time”, while suggesting that 5G use cases will not be centred on the phone, but mainly around the Internet of Things.

“We need a totally different experience to cater for all the machines, because believe it or not, the machines are pickier than the smartphones. They have a wide range of performance criteria that need to be working really well,” he said.

Many Asian operators are now pushing roll out of the world’s first 5G networks to coincide with the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Korea and 2020 summer games in Japan, but Ewaldsson warned that while it is important for the industry to have a target, collaboration across the ecosystem is essential.

“The biggest risks with these big projects like 5G, and that was also a risk with 4G, 3G and 2G before that, is that things get slipped and we have delays because either there is too much focus on standardisation or on things that are cumbersome. At the end of the day telecoms is based on collaboration.”

To watch the full interview click here.