Ericsson has denied reports suggesting its cooperation with South Korea, announced yesterday, will lead to investment of US$1.5 billion in the country over the next five years and an increase in its local employee headcount from 80 to 1,000. Those figures were released in a statement from South Korea’s presidential office, but the world’s largest mobile network vendor later claimed it was too early to talk about concrete figures. “We have never quantified the amount of the investment and thus [the] information is not correct,” an Ericsson spokesperson told Mobile Business Briefing.

According to a Financial Times report, Ericsson officials said it was plausible that its investment in South Korea could reach US$1.5 billion in future, but insisted such figures were highly speculative at this stage. A statement from Ericsson yesterday spoke generally of a “collaboration” between Ericsson and the Republic of Korea “to use mobile broadband and other communication technologies, such as machine to machine, to create a green eco-system.” A Light Reading Asia report – one of the first publications to expose the “confusion” – added that LTE technology is at the heart of the cooperation agreement.