Ericsson secures €250mn loan for 5G R&D
Swedish multinational telecommunications company Ericsson has secured a €250mn from the European Investment Bank (EIB) in the aim of boosting its 5G research and development (R&D) efforts.
“We are very pleased to announce the new funding from the European Investment Bank,” said Carl Mellander, Chief Finance Officer of Ericsson. “It will support our research and development activities for 5G and extend our debt maturity profile.”
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The company hopes to lead the way in commercial 5G in Europe, looking to utilise the increased data rates and ultra-low latency of 5G to allow businesses to capitalise on new opportunities in fields such as the internet of things.
In turn, this will both support European technological innovation and keep thousands of highly skilled, in-demand STEM jobs within the EU.
“The development of 5G technology is easily one of the most important innovation initiatives for the telecom industry in the coming years,” said Alexander Stubb, Vice President of the European Investment Bank. “Ericsson has been one of the defining contributors to what mobile telephony is today and I think we can only be proud to support this.”
Earlier this year, Ericsson extended its partnership with US data centre specialist Equinix to look at developing IT solutions to improve telecommunications network performance.
Further, in December Ericsson was recruited by Verizon to provide networking equipment ahead of the US telco’s 5G launch, planned for later this year.
With the first systems set to be launched later this year, Ericsson forecasts that there will be more than one billion 5G subscriptions by 2023.
