Keen On… Hans Vestberg: How Ericsson Enables The Internet [TCTV]

Hands up if you know what Ericsson does? Yes, we all know about that Sony-Ericsson smartphone thingamajig. But as Hans Vestberg, Ericsson’s surprisingly youthful CEO and President told me, Ericsson can claim, as much as any other company, to actually run the network. Forty percent of all the world’s digital infrastructure is provided by Ericsson and 50% of the world’s smartphone traffic goes through Ericsson, Vestberg explained to me when we met at the SIME conference in London. And you ain’t seen nothing yet, Vestberg insists. By 2017, there will be 15 times more data traveling on the network and there will be 3 times as many networked devices as there actually are people on earth. So Ericsson’s role – as the company enabling the Internet – is only going to become more central in the next few years. But if Ericsson can handle tomorrow’s network with the ease with which Vestberg dealt with my question about how many babies will be born during our interview, then I’m confident we are in good hands.