Ericsson, like several cellular infrastructure vendors, has solutions designed to lower cellular network rollout costs for operators in emerging markets. Surprisingly, however, the company says it's seeing greater interest for its low-cost GSM infrastructure solutions from operators in highly developed markets.
'The US is our biggest market for cost-optimized GSM,' Ulf Ewaldsson, VP and head of GSM product management at Ericsson, told the Show Daily. 'As they swap out their older network equipment for new, they're selecting our low-cost equipment to do it.'
Operators in Western Europe are following a similar trend, he added.
Ewaldsson said that while the uptake of its Expander low-cost GSM equipment portfolio - which tackles the total cost of ownership (TCO) problem by providing greater power efficiency and greater range - is surprising, it's not that surprising.
'The benefits from using cost-optimized equipment include site reductions of up to 50% and transmission savings of 25%,' he said. 'We can lower the TCO, which includes opex costs and capex costs besides the actual GSM equipment, to below what you would pay just for the network equipment. So that's appealing to shareholders in developed markets as well as emerging markets.'
Ewaldsson also pointed out that its Expander product line actually started out with the general replacement market in mind.
'We started Expander thinking it would be good for the developed markets where operators were looking to expand coverage and swap out older equipment,' he said. 'Then we thought that it would also be good for markets like India.'