VIDEO INTERVIEW: Ericsson has opened up on the challenges posed by the North American mobile market, the vendor giant’s largest region by sales, with focus now turning to maximising the “data capacity crunch opportunity.”

Ericsson’s North America CTO Glenn Laxdal told Mobile World Live that the company regards the “insatiable demand for data”, which it forecasts will grow by 50-55 per cent over the next five years, as both an opportunity and challenge in the market, and the company is moving to bring “more sophisticated technologies” to help operators deal with rising requirements.

Indeed, according to a recent GSMA report, North America is leading the world in the adoption of 4G networks. Last month Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg noted that the company’s mobile broadband business in the region fell in Q3 compared to the same period last year following the widespread rollout of 4G networks.

“It’s all about densifying the networks right now and moving towards small cells, providing in building coverage and multi layered capability so we can increase capacity by bundling two or three carriers together,” Laxdal said.

And Laxdal was bullish on the prospects for its Radio Dot small cell kit. Ericsson has already announced commercial deployment at Verizon and Laxdal said the product is in trials with AT&T, among others: “We see a really strong pipeline in front of us, a really good volume.”

Laxdal noted that “mobile continues to explode”, which is serving to increase data consumption per smartphone, per user.

“The key challenge for North America now is to find ways to deliver all this capacity,” he commented.

5G
Laxdal also addressed another major technological advancement expected by the 2020 timeframe. The executive told Mobile World Live it is now the right time “for the North American markets and North American operators to step in and assert themselves over the development of 5G”.

“The Asian operators, in particular Japan and South Korea, have been particularly aggressive in the 5G space so far as they are looking to deploy a bit earlier than 2020,” he said. “Keeping in mind Verizon’s recent announcement, the North American operators have now jumped on board and I think it’s great for the market… We will look to support them completely with this.”

Watch the full interview here.