Michael van Rooyen:
0:00
Today I’m sharing part two of my interview with Ian Ross, the head of Private Cylinder Networks for Australia and New Zealand at Ericsson. If you missed part one, I suggest having a listen to that first.
Ian Ross:
0:12
Private 4G, private 5G. It’s not the solution, but it’s the foundation. It’s the enabler for the technologies, for the systems, for the sensors that provide the solution.
Michael van Rooyen:
0:25
And if I think about without doing too much deep dive, and you’ve covered it realistically, if I think about how it integrates into a customer’s network, so you’re really just providing the access network, bringing those streams in, bringing it to AI no doubt, because that’s fueling a lot of video vision all that it just really integrates into the customer’s network, right. So you’ve got the secure wireless network that you’re building from a private lt point of view and then it really just for people on on who, listening, are technical, it’s just really then joining the rest of the network downstream.
Ian Ross:
0:49
So there’s an ip connectivity at some point and it just becomes an extension but the the power of the technology is, it’s the control over the users and the applications, and this is where it really excels.
Ian Ross:
1:00
In a cellular world, you can identify a user or an application flow and you can treat it with a different level of quality of service. And, unlike Wi-Fi where it’s really just serving access on a random basis, in the cellular world everything is scheduled, so the network is smart enough to know who’s got what data, how important that data is, what policy has been to assign to it in terms of packet loss and latency, and then network resources are assigned to make sure those policies can be met. And the really powerful thing and this is the God complex of mobile networks if the policy can’t be met, it’s got inbuilt ruthless preemption, so the network will actually remove applications and users of a lower priority to make way for higher priority users. So you can start to see now why industry is looking at this. You imagine the scenario of a 400-ton haul truck driving with a full load at 60 kilometres an hour. You want that truck to be connected, correct, correct All the time, and the network can give that ability to do it Right right.
Michael van Rooyen:
1:57
So I think about critical operations, even I just think about emergency services, fire. That’s very interesting.
Ian Ross:
2:09
So user application, the quality of service, is a whole different level. It is Guarantee is a very dangerous word, but it’s probably one of the most powerful wireless technologies we’ve got in terms of moving close to that idea of guaranteeing a network experience. And it just doesn’t need to be automation. Imagine the warehouse with the scanners. I mentioned before the issue of consistency of connectivity. So in that sort of environment it now actually allows us to realise these mixed operation spaces where you have workers working in the same environment as machines of different levels of automation and control, but in a safe manner.
Ian Ross:
2:37
You can have, in a warehouse environment, agvs moving pallets around and stacking At the same time. You’ve got drones flying up and down doing real-time stock taking At the same time. You’ve still got the regular employee there with their scanner, but everything’s remaining connected and insured. So the AGV is getting its low-latency connections, the drone’s got its safety management systems and its automation stop if there’s an issue, but that scanner is staying connected to SAP and not dropping off the network. That’s cool, right? So this is the power of the technology here. I get excited by it. I love it.
Michael van Rooyen:
3:09
Look, and I do as well. The more we talk about it, the more fascinated I get. I’m with you. You get to luckily, play with it every day. I just get to talk about it and look at the customer. Right is the main thing.
Ian Ross:
3:25
There is an economic element to this. So ports in Italy that have rolled this technology out, they’ve been able to improve their container movement efficiency something like 10%, just by having better paths through the port to move the containers.
Michael van Rooyen:
3:37
Now, that doesn’t sound like much, but when you think about the number of containers, well, that’s right, correct right Vessel berthing is a big thing.
Ian Ross:
3:43
So again, one of these other ports we’ve been dealing with. They’ve been able to eliminate $100,000 US downtime every fortnight.
Michael van Rooyen:
3:51
What.
Ian Ross:
3:52
Just to sell their technology because of the stability of connection. So you’re not dealing with oh, the network’s down so I can’t berth the vessel. The network’s always up and running. We use the technology as Ericsson. We’re a manufacturer. We have 5G and radio assembly lines. This is our business. We manufacture equipment for networks and we use this in our Estonia factory for fault detection.
Ian Ross:
4:12
So we have technicians using AR-assisted 4G, 5g connected devices and we’re able to reduce fault time detection by 15%. But when it comes time to research an issue, the AR tools that we’re using, connected via a private network, eliminate research time by 50%. So these are solid bottom line savings. And then when you start looking at the focus on sustainability and decarbonisation not as much here, I’d say in Melbourne today, heating is a very important thing, but just by better environmental control on these larger facilities we’re seeing some customers report a 10% to 20% reduction in their CO2 footprint from heating and cooling. Now we have this ability that private 4G, private 5G. It’s not the solution, but it’s the foundation. It’s the enabler for the technologies, for the systems, for the sensors that provide the solution. Those solutions can benefit safety, as I said, productivity, efficiency, sustainability, very very cool, very, very cool.
Michael van Rooyen:
5:08
And if I think about then, you’ve given so many examples sensor data, massive amount of consumption, we know, and everyone’s talking about AI. So let’s get it out of the way. Obviously, the futurist Amy Webb was talking a lot about we’ll uncover over the internet. We’re ingesting all these large language models and now really IoT sensor data is really what they’re thinking is going to continue to fuel the AI engine. I’m assuming you guys are thinking the same. Yeah, absolutely.
Ian Ross:
5:32
But for me it’s around unstructured data. So the consumer market has really latched on to chat, gbt and generative AI and large language models, but I think with an industrial lens. For me it’s around computer vision. So much of the data enterprises industry deals with is unstructured and there just simply aren’t sensors available for a lot of things. There’s a manufacturing customer that we work with in the US that saw that a single camera could replace 120 sensors and then capture many more aspects that they could train the computer vision AI engine and the machine learning to interpret. But you could never buy a sensor, for the power we see here is these networks provide the ability to put more vision sources out in the operating area, more streams coming back. They can provide more intelligence. Important to note here we’re not seeing computer vision AI is going to take away jobs, but I think what we’re seeing is it’s augmenting people to make staff higher, skilled and more effective, but it’s also taking on tasks that are too mundane for a worker to do.
Ian Ross:
6:32
There’s a great conversation in the mining process when you’re extracting copper. You basically grind it up, you put it into a chemical soup, the copper floats to the surface in bubbles and you scrape it off, and that’s part of the extraction process. The entire efficiency of that process is measured by the size of the bubbles, the frequency bubbles and the colour of the bubbles Really Right. So the way they do it is someone who’s highly experienced checks in occasionally and looks at the settling vat and the settling tank and says I think the bubbles are okay. Well, I don’t know about you, but watching bubbles in the bath isn’t really an exciting pastime.
Ian Ross:
7:10
But this is a great target for AI. Yes, you put multiple cameras, different angles, in a production environment. You don’t want to run cables to them, so you power them up from a power source, come back via private cellular, but now what you’ve got is a 24 by 7 bubble monitoring capability. But your experts train, yes, and they optimize and they, they continue, but 24 by 7. That process, the crusher circuits are being optimized continually and the ai doesn’t get tired. That’s very cool.
Michael van Rooyen:
7:37
that is very cool. More precise and you can also actually that unstructured data, being able to look at those bubbles and also what’s changed in the environment slight temperature change or environmental change Absolutely fascinating Talking about that. If I think about mining, it’s a business that consumes a lot of power and our industry alone data centers, building networks and running IT is obviously one of the highest consumers of power holistically. So let’s just talk about sustainability. That’s another topic everyone’s talking about. I know that I spoke to one of your counterparts recently in Ericsson as well and talking about even things like eSIMs how that’s going to really help. Just waste it sounds small for people who think of a normal SIM, but still a plastic and all that. Can you just touch on a bit more around that private LTE 5G and how these things are contributing towards sustainable business practices?
Ian Ross:
8:22
Yeah. So I think it comes back to what I was saying before. It’s a foundation. I’ve done a lot of work in the mining sector. You look at the shift towards the electrified, digitized, automated mine. That’s a key sustainability objective Electrification running out, diesel, diesel fumes so the ability to drive those technologies out there is key.
Ian Ross:
8:42
And I think, to take a step back, when you look at sustainability initiatives, whether it’s clean technology adoption, whether it’s resource and biodiversity monitoring, whether it’s digitalisation or electrification, everything involves data. Right, there’s no point driving a sustainability initiative if you can’t measure it and report on it. In fact, when you look at ESG, that’s the biggest criticism of many ESG initiatives Great in principle, but are you monitoring, are you reporting it and are you actually evaluating your success? So, with everything being data-driven, I think the impact these private selling networks are having on sustainability is the ability to capture that data, to monitor the performance, to introduce the new tools that drive that sustainability benefit, whether it’s a sensor or control system that can monitor level activity and turn lights or heating off, whether it’s more refined just-in-time control of the system, whether it’s the ability to pull telemetry from a truck or a vehicle and realise that the optimal speed and optimal angle to go up a ramp. That’s the power of private selling. It’s the connectivity of the data that can be analysed to unlock the knowledge of the business to drive those sustainability outcomes.
Ian Ross:
9:48
But we do our own bit. If you move away from private selling and you think of large-scale mobile networks, I think Australia you can cover Australia with 10,000 cell towers. Right In New Zealand it’s 2,500 cell towers to cover the population Within those markets. That’s a huge amount of technology running 24 by 7 consuming power. What we have done as a manufacturer, designer of equipment in this space is we’ve worked to break the energy curve. So I think we are now looking at a 30 to 60% reduction in power consumption for these networks. So, yes, we’re the enabling element for other technologies, but we do our bit as well in terms of sustainability.
Michael van Rooyen:
10:28
Sure, that’s significant. I mean, that’s a lot of change. Yeah, to give you an idea of where it’s come.
Ian Ross:
10:33
we put our radios to sleep in those little fractions of a millisecond when they’re not sending data. We call it micro-sleep, transmit Right. So when the radio is not transmitting, so it’s pausing for like 20 milliseconds, it will take a nap and then wake up again. So that provides these power benefits. So it’s insane what the engineers can do Unbelievable Without affecting quality, without affecting services.
Michael van Rooyen:
10:55
I mean it’s minor, but it reminds me very much of when they rolled out the stop starting cars right the. It reminds me very much of when they rolled out the stop starting cars right, the traffic jams right.
Ian Ross:
11:01
It is, it’s almost the same. It’s just at the lights for a couple of minutes. We’re now looking at milliseconds. Yeah, of course.
Ian Ross:
11:05
And it all adds up over time no-transcript to turn off some of the capacity in the network. That’s amazing. Now we don’t see that as much in enterprise, because the networks aren’t that large. But the same principles flow through to what we’re doing and I think in 2010, our radios, as a data point, might’ve consumed 100 watts of power per transmit branch. That same sort of radio technology, with evolution, is now down to, I think, six watts per transmit branch.
Michael van Rooyen:
11:54
Wow, that’s massive.
Ian Ross:
11:54
Yeah, that’s crazy. So lots of little things happening all over the place.
Michael van Rooyen:
11:58
Wow, that’s fantastic. Are you trying to help customers with their journey to sustainability, using the technology to deliver their sustainable outcomes, but also what you guys are doing to support that? I want to pivot a little bit now from a lot of technology, and I could talk about this for the rest of the day.
Ian Ross:
12:12
all the technology. Stop me, no, no.
Michael van Rooyen:
12:15
And I absolutely love it. I also wanted to probably just touch on a few technology leadership type questions for you, because obviously you’ve been in many, many businesses and run teams et cetera with teams. I guess what I’m keen to understand from your point of view as a leader in the space, what are kind of the leadership principles you believe are essential for driving innovation and achieving strategic goals with customers, internally et cetera?
Ian Ross:
12:34
Yeah, that’s a good one. I’d start with an open mindset. This industry we’re in whether it’s technology, whether it’s using technology changes so fast. As I said, there’s no right answers. We don’t even know sometimes the problems we’re trying to solve. So I think the fundamental to me is it’s an open mindset. There’s also recognition. There’s no right answer, there’s no fixed answers. There’s no silver bullets. You have to be prepared to innovate. You have to and I think I’ve probably got the Ericsson brainwashing here but you have to imagine possible, which is what we have as an ethos in our company. And I think the other thing here is it’s okay to fail. I was at a customer conference the other week and they mentioned a company’s introduced a chief of failure.
Michael van Rooyen:
13:19
Now, I think, that’s pretty radical.
Ian Ross:
13:20
I don’t think you want to say when I want to grow up, I want to introduced a chief of failure Now. I think that’s pretty radical.
Ian Ross:
13:22
I don’t think you want to sit there and say when I want to grow up I want to be a chief of failure, but I think the essence of what they’re getting at is that innovation. You’ve got to experiment, you’ve got to try new things, and I think that’s my key thought in this space Push the boundaries, explore new ways of doing things, particularly when we look at what you can do with technologies like private cellular. It gives you the ability to take on new challenges. Don’t be afraid to try them. Yes, right, obviously, do it in a very safe way that doesn’t impact production, of course, but that’s my view.
Ian Ross:
13:49
Yeah great.
Michael van Rooyen:
13:51
And then if I think of the role you run for Australia and New Zealand and again working with your counterparts globally, the tech industry is very fast-paced, right and always changing, and that’s one thing I think you touched on at the beginning of our conversation. One thing I enjoy and I’ve always enjoyed about industry I’ve worked in no other industry is tech, and it changes all the time and I love it because it never gets boring. There’s always a challenge, there’s always ways to do things and there’s always fascinating outcomes. But for you, and particularly in Ericsson, how do you guys remain agile and responsive to market changes and customer needs?
Ian Ross:
14:19
Yeah, I think there’s a great example here. We have something like a 35,000 strong engineering R&D workforce 35% of the company is an R&D function and we don’t lose sight of the fact that what we need to do is to drive the innovation. So we use that capability to work very closely with our customers to understand what they’re doing, what they want to do, and then we translate that into a technical capability. And the same thing in enterprise. We look at what’s the ambition, what’s the business direction, and that boils down to how can technology, as we have it today or as we think we’re evolving it, be used? And a great example is AI.
Ian Ross:
14:56
We spoke about this before. Right, all of our engineers are AI trained 35,000 of them. We’ve all gone through basically the equivalent of the Masters of AI type of arrangement Not university masters, but the boot camp type of AI education and they’ve been trained to know what AI is and how to use it. And they’re encouraged to identify where the technology can be used to streamline what they do, how we operate our technology or simply add new capabilities to our products. That’s very cool, right? They’re encouraged to push the boundaries and bring ideas and drive the evolution. Yes, and I think that’s really how we stay ahead. It’s like we look at technology, we invest in it, we explore it, we embrace it. We’re not afraid to try it. There will be some failures on the way, of course, but, again, you don’t learn without failures. The key point is to recognize why it went wrong and then to go back and learn from that experience. So that’s how we do it. That literacy, that capability, that digital comprehension is a core competency of any organization that wants to see in this tech world.
Michael van Rooyen:
15:59
And knowing that your life is really connectivity and you’ve come from many flavors of the space, if you think about the growth trajectory, and we’ll continue to see this connectivity grow, which means it’s going to be a whole emerging tech field, although Eric’s been doing it for a long time and it’s been around a while, but I can definitely see, as we open, more opportunities to build these sorts of networks and help enterprises, et cetera. There’ll be new leaders. What sort of advice would you give them to become leaders in the space or get involved in the connectivity space?
Ian Ross:
16:25
My advice would stay across the industry trends, just not those in ICT, but also the end users, the people who are driving the adoption of technology. If you understand their trends then you’d be more valuable to them. So just not the technology trends, the business trends, the overarching macro issues that they’re trying to work through. Ultimately, I think the biggest gap we have as an industry and this is just not the ICT industry but industries in general is building the linkage between operational challenges of business and that digital comprehension, getting across those operational challenges and knowledge of the technology.
Ian Ross:
16:55
I think it is a sweet spot. It’s that white space that we need more people doing that. Always keep the user and the outcome in mind. And Blank sheet of paper is all powerful, so don’t get caught up in trying to be defined by things. But I think the other element here is partnering. We’re in a collaborative world. We have technologies that help us collaborate. Not one person can do everything, so the role of those trusted value partners up and down the supply chain are absolutely critical. So if you’re moving in this connectivity space, you want to be a leader in this space. It’s build that ecosystem of partners with the technology, the capability, the services to make the projects a success.
Michael van Rooyen:
17:30
Yeah, that’s great advice, right? I think we as technologists get to consume the technology. We love the technology and we’re all in for it. But the ability to talk about the business outcome and I really like your point on it what problem you’re trying to solve for the end user is really the key. And look, as we come to the end of this, just a couple more questions for you, reflecting on your career what have been some of the most rewarding experiences that you’ve seen and what continues to motivate you? I mean, I can just hear your voice there the use cases.
Ian Ross:
17:57
But outside of that, I’m the classic problem solver at heart Engineer by training, engineer by hobby, engineer by passion. I just love seeing the problems and solving them, and I enjoy nothing more than identifying a business challenge, finding an operational obstacle, ideating how technology can solve that, how can we do something different or something better, and then seeing it through to execution. This is my motivation. Every day brings a new challenge and I think what we see here is the potential, mobility, the potential of 5G, what it can do in helping achieve these digital transformational changes. It’s exciting.
Michael van Rooyen:
18:33
Absolutely, absolutely. I don’t see myself doing anything for a long while, that’s different than this and it’s digital plumbing on a whole different level. Right, it is. Yes, as I say, I envy you because it’s an exciting space to be in and we’re only again at the tipping point. Yes, it’s been around for a while for consumerization, but I just think what’s coming is very interesting. As we wrap up here, any last messages you want to leave for for listeners. If there’s any other key message you want to, leave.
Ian Ross:
18:58
I think it just comes back to look. 5g is a technology that we, as consumers we we are using more and more. But don’t think of it just as a consumer technology. It’s an enterprise. It can be used to do more with Wiles than we ever dreamed was possible. When you take that 5G capability and you combine it with these dedicated, site-specific private networks that give you control over the security, the access, the performance, that deterministic behavior, you start to open up a whole new world of use cases that we haven’t even scratched the surface on. I agree, right, and we talk about augmented workers with VR and AR, and it might sound a little bit science fiction-y, but we’re already seeing the power of AR in construction and shipbuilding in the US. Yes, right, so it’s a massive game changer for on-the-job training and accessing information. Computer vision, ai it doesn’t sound as sexy as large language models and generative ai, but what you can do with unstructured data and the importance of business on this is massive absolutely.
Michael van Rooyen:
19:54
And look, last question which I I always ask guests of the show and you’ve had a very, very intriguing list already. But tell me about the most significant technology change or shift you’ve been involved with during your career. So that’s anything. The whole time you’ve been doing it. What is it like? Kind of number one or two that stands? That’s really shifted.
Ian Ross:
20:12
Look, I’ve been in this game for over 25 years. I started off, you know, looking at cable telephony, then got involved digital power line technology, which is really crazy stuff. That is crazy stuff high speed optical and microwave. Converged data networks you know, wirelessline convergence been a lot in virtualization. They’ve all been exciting, but they’ve all been in the same space of it’s just moving data around.
Ian Ross:
20:36
I think where we’re at now for me is the most significant change, particularly because it’s enterprise focused and it’s not enterprise branch office connectivity and IT, and here’s email, here’s a webpage, here’s an internet source. This is changing processes. It’s taking a harvesting system and putting AI on it and connecting that harvest to be automated and then detecting what type of weed and putting the right chemical on the weed. You haven’t really lived until you’ve been on a haul road with a 400 ton haul truck driving itself. Right, I bet you haven’t. That’d be weird to see. Well, that’s right. So that’s why I think that’s probably the the most significant thing we’ve seen here. You’ve now got the capability to connect anything anywhere with virtually dare I say no, not unlimited bandwidth, but huge amounts of bandwidth and data. What can you do with that? We’re now operating an area where we’re not constrained by connectivity. We have a thirst for data. We can do a lot more with the data. We can connect it anywhere, everywhere, anytime and really without constraint.
Ian Ross:
21:34
Yes, and to me that’s the exciting bit.
Michael van Rooyen:
21:36
That is exciting. That is exciting and I think you’ve absolutely nailed it. I think it’s the bottom of the bell curve and I think, with the constraint of connectivity removed, I’m a big digital plumber myself and, of course, network and security security. But specifically, if I think about the things we’ve talked about today, I think that is definitely one that is outstanding.
Ian Ross:
21:59
Well, I think, as enterprises, the first time in enterprise where we truly have the ability to set a vision and to execute a plan for how we’re going to create agility, how we’re going to advance operations with automation, but how we’re going to unlock the intelligence in the business. We didn’t know that sat there. That’s true, and I think that’s what makes this so dramatic. So much to be uncovered.
Michael van Rooyen:
22:14
Yeah, we’ve never been here before. That’s right, Ian. Look absolutely fascinating conversation. I really appreciate the time. As I said, we could keep talking for hours, but I appreciate your time today. No, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, All right.
