Ericsson increases Montreal staff by 200, preps the IMS pitch

Ericsson Canada Inc. is increasing the headcount by 200 at its Montreal R&D facility in an effort to help the company bring its "full service broadband" initiative to fruition. The total workforce at the facility now tops 1,800. In a presentation to media and analysts in Toronto, the network equipment maker showcased its latest wares that it will use to convince carriers to bring all of their services under an IMS umbrella. The project aims to converge mobile, fixed, wireless and wireline networks for a seamless end-user experience. Carrier customers also got a chance to see the new initiative in action.The full service broadband initiative depends primarily on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) - a network architecture that lets carriers port content from device to device (say, the TV to a mobile phone), and better control the flow of revenue from the infrastructure. Mark Henderson, CEO of Ericsson Canada, said that the Canadian facility is playing a major role in bringing this vision to fruition. "A lot of this work...is happening inside the Montreal R&D centre," said Mark Henderson, Ericsson Canada's CEO, explaining why the company is investing in the facility. It already counts as Ericsson's second-largest R&D centre outside of Sweden, its home base.Convergence is the big trend in the telecommunications network space and equipment makers such as Ericsson are leveraging this trend to the advantage. As well, network speed increases and the growth of broadband wireless adoption open up a number of opportunities in the wireless arena. Growth in wireless broadband services will outpace the growth of wireline broadband by 2011 and wireless speeds will jump considerably ranging from approximately 3 Mbps for HSDPA and 144 Mbps via LTE by 2009. Network speed is really about lowering the cost per megabit and as speed increases, cost per megabit decrease.Dragan Nerandzic, Ericsson Canada CTO, also pointed out that wireless connectivity is more than voice: wireless routers, PC cards, modems, built-in chipsets for laptops and PDAs, along with future devices, go hand in hand with ubiquitous network coverage. Meanwhile, wireline infrastructure is also improving as network operators roll fibre-optic cables out to WAN nodes, homes and businesses."We are creating a new garden, a new ecosystem, to allow new fruits, flowers...to grow," Nerandzic said, indicating that it's difficult to predict just what kinds of devices and services future networks will support.Ericsson has been on a spending spree lately, acquiring companies to build an all-encompassing carrier-services net. The firm purchased Marconi Corp. for optical transport technologies, Redback Networks Inc. for broadband edge and access routers, Entrisphere Inc. for fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology, Tandberg Television for IPTV, Drutt Corp. for content delivery, and Ericsson is in the process of acquiring LHS Telekom for billing services. "That's how we plan to take this forward," Nerandzic said.Demonstrations included a mobile TV platform that lets users change channels in five seconds, and interactive content. Ericsson also demonstrated content sharing among devices and users, interoperating network services (voice, video, and messaging), and an enhanced gaming platform that adds presence to online poker.It's clear that end users don't want to pay substantially more than they already do for entertainment options, noted Keith Shank, director of Ericsson's Experience Lab in Dallas. Nonetheless, "they want to have what they have at home delivered back to what they have in their hand," he said.

Ericsson increases Montreal staff by 200, preps the IMS pitch

News | July 10, 2007

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