Ericsson unveiled a batch of 5G-focused products for MWC19 Barcelona, as its president of Europe and Latin America, Arun Bansal (pictured), claimed the vendor was outstripping rivals in signing commercial 5G contracts.

The company has ten commercial agreements with operators in place: four in the US; four in Europe; and two in the Asia Pacific region, a statistic Bansal said was far higher than competitors.

Rivals, however, have also attempted to grasp the commercial leadership mantle over the last year by talking-up the number of deals they have in place. Market giant Huawei claimed in a new year message at the end of 2018 to have so far signed 26 commercial 5G contracts with mobile operators.

“There’s a lot of hype in the industry about a lot of trials and I’m sure you read every day different vendors have different numbers,” Ericsson’s Bansal said. “For us it is not just about the partnerships…More important for us is the commercial contracts we have with the customers and, by far, Ericsson has the highest number of commercial agreements in the world.”

Launches
At its pre-MWC19 event Ericsson, announced a number of enhancements to its 5G platform across its core and radio network propositions, in addition to upgrades to its transport and service orchestration systems.

The new platform innovations, the vendor said, enable “service providers to smoothly evolve their networks and deploy 5G at scale”.

Within its cloud core portfolio Ericsson is set to release a number of new elements designed to improve automation under the “dual-mode 5G Cloud Core” banner. The system supports standalone and non-standalone 5G, and includes open APIs.

In its RAN portfolio, it launched nine new radios to accommodate new frequencies and provide higher capacity, alongside continuing to push its virtualised RAN system.

The company’s long-haul transport range was upgraded to enhance 5G support with the launch of the Mini-Link 6200.

Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration platform was improved to ease software upgrades, expand the use cases of AI and add network slicing automation.

Thomas Noren, Ericsson head of 5G commercialisation, said the new launches came as it was seeing “a huge demand for 5G,” highlighting early findings from an 18-country consumer research study the company is set to publish later this year.

Its research found 40 per cent of smartphone users reported network congestion issues, with a third of respondents stating if their current operator didn’t launch 5G within six months of a rival they would switch.