Ericsson is on a mission to ‘enable game changers’, according to Rafiah Ibrahim, Ericsson’s head of Middle East and East Africa. Speaking recently at a roundtable event she said, “We are focussing on new areas to Ericsson such as broadcast and media, and are appealing to three groups of change makers, namely operators, broadcasters, and people.” She continued, “Operators are looking to generate more revenue, deliver more services, and operate the best networks, and we are actively involved in assisting them to achieve this.”

During the course of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the beginning of March, Ericsson announced a number of wide-reaching agreements with operators from the Middle East, including companies such as Ooredoo, Etisalat, STC, and Zain for projects including a LTE-Advanced Small Cell solution, 5G, Radio Dot, and a Business Support Systems transformation project.

Looking ahead, Ibrahim says Ericsson shall remain active in areas as they relate to the core network, but has identified other activities of interest including OSS/BSS, cloud and IP, and managed services, while also developing solutions for specific industrial and societal verticals such as transportation, public services, and energy.

Ericsson is making 2,200 redundancies in Sweden, mainly in R&D and supply, as part of a wider two-year cost-cutting campaign.

Previously announced at the company’s Capital Markets Day in November, the company gave out more details about the programme, including where the axe is going to fall.

There are set to be further redundancies outside Sweden as part of the same two-year programme, in addition to today’s announcement.

The company also confirmed the previously announced aim of saving SEK9 billion (US$1.2 billion) over the same period.

The aim is to reduce cost, both by cutting headcount and hitting external costs through a programme that will run through 2017.

Ericsson hopes to deploy the savings on growth areas, such as IP, cloud, TV & media and OSS/BSS.

This year’s efficiency drive will target R&D, service delivery, and the supply chain but the company is also casting an eye over sales, general, and administration, as well as external costs such as outside consultants and consolidating its IT portfolio.

As part of its programme, the company is establishing three global ICT centres with a common test and development strategy and methodology for R&D.

Ericsson has 115,000 employees globally and given its ongoing shift in focus in recent periods, the company has been changing its mix of employees. During 2014 it let go 15,000 employees but hired 19,000 staff for a net gain of about 4,000, taking its global total headcount to 116,000 at the end of 2014.

Ooredoo announced that as of December 31, 2014, the Group’s consolidated customer base stood at 107 million, representing year-on-year growth of 12 per cent. Group revenue for the twelve months 2014 decreased by two per cent to QAR 33.21 billion (US$9.12 billion). Group EBITDA stood at QAR 12.95 billion, down 11.5 per cent, while Ooredoo’s EBITDA margin decreased to 39 per cent from 43 per cent a year earlier due to the continued strategic investments across the business into broadband networks, customer acquisition and retention, global brand roll-out, service launches and customer experience. Net profit attributable to Ooredoo shareholders for 2014 was QAR 2.13 billion, down 17 per cent year-on-year.

For the quarter to December 31, the operator reported flat revenues at QAR 8.37 billion, while EBITDA fell by 21 per cent year-on-year, and net profit attributable to Ooredoo shareholders collapsed by 89 per cent to QAR 55 million.

Ooredoo today announced that its customer base has exceeded 100 million people across its footprint in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Ooredoo achieved this milestone in Q4 2014 according to figures released today, following a year that saw the company grow its customer base in key markets like Qatar, Algeria, and Oman, as well as launch operations in new markets like Myanmar.

Ooredoo operates in markets with an addressable population of more than 700 million people, and sees strong potential for growth across its footprint.

Its newest market, Myanmar, has a population of around 53 million people and a relatively low mobile penetration rate of 27 per cent, according to the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology. Within its first month of commercial operations in 2014, Ooredoo reached more than one million customers in the country.

Ooredoo also achieved key milestones in a number of its core markets in 2014, growing its customer base in Qatar to more than three million and reaching more than 3.5 million 3G customers in Algeria within one year of the launch of 3G services.

Etisalat Group and Ericsson have entered a strategic partnership to develop the next generation of mobile technology: 5G. The two companies will exchange knowledge, share pioneering solutions and tap into the potential of 5G technology, which will help deliver the future Networked Society.

Last year Etisalat announced that it was aiming to be the first operator in the region to roll out 5G in the coming years and has already demonstrated 115Gbps data transmission rate capability as part of the development of 5G. The technology will be vital to support the growing demand for data required by customers. With faster speeds, lower latency and better performance in highly dense areas, 5G is an evolution of the user experience. In addition, it will enable new device-to-device and machine-to-machine applications.

The partnership will also tap into the potential of the 450Mbps LTE speed that can be accomplished thanks to Ericsson’s License Assisted Access (LAA) technology. LAA will help to improve mobile data speeds and reduce congestion, benefiting all wireless network users.

LAA is an LTE feature that leverages the 5GHz unlicensed band in combination with licensed spectrum to deliver a performance boost for mobile device users. It is an LTE-Advanced technology that improves mobile data speeds and reduces congestion, benefiting all wireless network users. It enables carrier aggregation of licensed with unlicensed bands to effectively address growth in indoor data traffic.