Mobile World Congress: Mobility Creates Economic Opps in Recession

It’s not all doom and gloom out there: Ericsson President and CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg said today at a panel at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that 2008 was a year of establishing mobile broadband, and that 2009 should bring more of the same as those investments in telecom infrastructure drive growth across societies.

“Ericsson stood strong during 2008 with a year-over-year sales growth of 11 percent and a strong financial position,” said Svanberg. “Our view of 2009 is unchanged, and as we said in our year-end report, it remains difficult to more precisely predict to what extent consumer telecom spending will be affected and how operators will act. Last year, our infrastructure business was hardly impacted at all, but it would be unreasonable to think that that would be the case also throughout 2009.”

On stage with Jeffrey Sachs, special advisor to the UN Secretary General, and Saad Hamad Al-Barrak, deputy chairman and managing director of the Zain Group, Svanberg said: "Communications plays a critical role in the development of a sustainable and prosperous society. Mobile phones have had a profound impact on peoples' lives all over the world. The mobile industry is now on the verge of another significant wave of investment, which will bring affordable mobile broadband services to all."

He also made an oblique reference to the just-passed U.S. stimulus plan.

"Investing in mobile broadband infrastructure can contribute to speeding recovery in the global recession,” said Svanberg. “According to the U.S. House of Representatives, such investments can have a direct impact on GDP and they say that for every USD investment in broadband, the economy sees a tenfold return. Today, mobile communication is as essential to any nation's infrastructure as water, transportation or electricity.”

Svanberg also said that the move toward all-IP networks creates new opportunities and challenges: "Consumers more and more start to demand access to any service, to any screen and anywhere and naturally this put demands on the operators' networks."

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