Ericsson celebrates 140 years of a history that goes from the mechanical workshop to 5G

Since Lars Magnus Ericsson founded a small engineering workshop in the center of Stockholm until today, telecommunications have experienced a revolution in which the Swedish company has been very present.

On April 1, 1876, Lars Magnus Ericsson founded his own company, a mechanical engineering workshop, in a modest 13-square-meter place in the center of Stockholm, where Lars Magnus and his partners began developing their own telephones. From this small space grew a multinational company that today employs around 115,000 people, operates in 180 countries and owns 39,000 patents.

Every now and then a turning point appears, a moment in time when everything changes. Ericsson's history is filled with turning points where we have led transformation by innovating and applying some of the most powerful technologies ever
invented.

When Lars Magnus Ericsson founded Ericsson, he did so with the conviction that communication satisfied a deep human need. As innovative entrepreneurs with a passion for technology, Lars Magnus and his wife Hilda worked together to establish a company that would become a world leader in telecommunications systems and services. Within five years, the company was already working on different continents. Its technological innovation was also evolving and in 1923 Ericsson had already deployed the infrastructure that gave rise to telephone networks in exponential growth, the 500 switch.

Already in the 1980s (1981), Ericsson launched the first mobile telephone system, NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony), in Saudi Arabia. NMT was the first fully automatic mobile telephone system and the standards to which it was built paved the way to GSM and modern mobile communication technology.

Five years later, Ericsson in collaboration with other companies developed the first generation of mobile internet called Mobitex. It was Ericsson technology that allowed the first two-way wireless data communication. Mobitex was the first wireless network to provide always-on, wireless email services, as well as the first publicly accessible wireless data communications service in North America. This was just the beginning of more and more information and images sent via mobile.

When Ericsson invented Bluetooth in 1994 and commercialized it in 1998, devices around the world were liberated. Named after the Danish king “Blåtand” (Bluetooth, “blue tooth”) Gormsson, this wireless technology became the global standard for data exchange over short distances. Ericsson made this standard possible and worked to make it global.

Bluetooth makes it possible for mobile phones to connect with portable speakers, medical devices and much more. The technology was cost-efficient and robust and capable of transmitting data quickly with minimal battery capacity, a critical feature.

And the technology not only allowed several devices to be connected at the same time, but they could also connect to each other without the need for mobile phones. In 2013, more than 2.5 billion products with Bluetooth technology were sold. The devices support powerful combinations applicable to industrial, scientific and medical sectors, not just entertainment. Bluetooth is becoming the standard for the Internet of Things and machine-to-machine communication, advances in industry and society that are transforming the way we live and that mean much more for everyone than simply living without cables.

LTE arrives

2009 marks the takeoff of the 4G standard. Long before the smartphone was ubiquitous, Ericsson helped create the 4G communication standard. Not only information, but also some of the most interactive and important experiences could finally move around the world at impressive speeds, making a richer life experience possible wherever you are.

Ericsson collaborated with other innovators to create the LTE standard and launched the world's first live LTE network that, with simpler technology and lower cost, offered faster speeds and more capacity so anyone could get that rich experience they want faster. As operators around the world were able to more quickly deliver the next generation of communications technology, people had in their hands the way to connect with the world, doing everything from video conferencing to gaming, mobile high-definition television or cloud computing, 3D television or intense use of applications.

The future

Ericsson is leading the development of 5G technologies together with its partners and major operators around the world. Like other evolutions to the next generation, 5G will lead to much higher performance. This means enormous flexibility, lower power requirements, higher capacity, bandwidth, security, reliability and much lower latency and device cost. The full potential of the Connected Society will be realized when 5G is deployed globally creating opportunities for use cases we have not even dreamed of, new markets and radically new business models, many with IoT applications.

Ericsson is betting big on making 5G the new global standard in communications technology. With 5G we will have the possibility of downloading a high-definition movie in seconds, performing surgery remotely or extending the battery life of mobile devices by more than ten years.