To celebrate its 10-year anniversary in Brunei, Ericsson invited guests to their Technology Tour, showcasing the company’s 5G and IoT capabilities, smart metering solutions and Technology for Good projects among other new, innovative offerings. The showcase reinforces Ericsson’s position as a market leader at the forefront of communications technology in the country. Martin Wiktorin , County Head of Ericsson Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines and Pacific Islands , 5th from right, and His Excellency Ambassador Hakan Jevrell, Ambassador of Sweden to Singapore and Brunei, 6th from right.

Last week marked Ericsson’s 10-year anniversary in Brunei. To celebrate the milestone, Ericsson invited its country stakeholders to view and experience the latest innovations and technologies during a technology demonstration attended by the Ambassador of Sweden to Singapore and Brunei, His Excellency Hakan Jevrell, and the Honorary Consul of the Embassy of the Netherlands to Brunei, Mr. Maarten Bomers, together with the local operators, telecommunications regulator, government agencies, local SMEs and local education institutes.

The showcase enabled event attendees to experience first-hand how Ericsson is evolving its business portfolio to provide smart solutions to real-world opportunities. “As we celebrate our 10th anniversary, I would like to emphasize our commitment to Brunei and its people through our technology innovations – particularly in 5G, IoT and Cloud,” said Martin Wiktorin , President and Country Manager of Ericsson Singapore and Brunei. “By constantly transforming our business portfolio and providing new, innovative solutions, we are enabling the communications industry and other sectors to do better business, increase efficiency, improve user experience and capture new opportunities.

The following Ericsson offerings were highlighted as part of the demonstrations:

At Ericsson, they strive to create a wireless environment where indoor and outdoor networks perform seamlessly together at all times. Integrated small cells in 5G networks deliver high per-user capacity and rate coverage everywhere, helping to meet the high requirements of network subscribers and tackle the challenges of urbanizing environments. With the potential to improve performance in the macro network by offloading traffic generated in hotspots, the demonstration introduced the industry’s first 5G NR-capable radio (Ericsson AIR products), which are able to support our 5G plug-ins for both Massive MIMO and Multi-User MIMO.

The Ericsson smart metering solution provides a platform for capturing information, monitoring consumption and presenting data from each meter at individual premises. The smart meter solution could be the first step towards IoT in Brunei The IoT application enables a 2-way communication between the smart meters and a centralized system over a wireless data network, enabling near real-time meter reading, charting of household consumption trends, online top-ups/reload and automatic credit control, among other things.

To transform everyday reality as we move into an even more networked society, computer aided technology that uses virtual reality headsets or multi-projected environments betters the consumer experience. In combination with physical environments or props that generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations simulate a user’s physical presence in a virtual or imaginary environment.

Vanessa Teo, founder & CEO of Agrome IQ was invited by Ericsson Brunei to showcase her agriculture technology solutions platform that support modern farmers in making effective decision-making processes to achieve a productive and profitable farm system.

 Ericsson’s Director for Brunei Gabriel Hii (center) with Martin Wiktorin , President and Country Manager of Ericsson Singapore and Brunei and Nitin Bansal, Ericsson’s head of network solutions for Southeast Asia, Oceania & India during the 10th anniversary of Ericsson Brunei at The Empire Hotel & Country Club

Rano’s thoughts: It’s good to see the idea of 5G being talked of. This will eventually be a good start for Brunei where smartphones are the highest penetration in the region, meaning that we are quite tech savvy to begin with and have access to technology.

However, that doesn’t necessarily translate to being ready or being in the right market for such technology. I do agree with what Gabriel mentioned that newer technologies such as the implementation of 5G systems (not just referring to mobile network) doesn’t guarantee its feasibility in the country if there is no demand or the lack of it.

For me, a good example is Augmented Reality. It’s good and all but we are not so much into it after a few tries. It’s just wow to our eyes but it’s not a must feature hence the demand for such is still not that great. The same can said to some aspect of 5G and the Internet of Things once it becomes available in Brunei.

I know that South Korea are testing their 5G capabilities for the Pyeonchang Games 2018 right now especially for the user experience where they can view their favourite athletes in real time and from a first person perspective. Now that’s what 5G is capable of. These are the things I would be very keen of.

For now, it’s more of creating a buzz for us to prep in the year end of 2019 where 5G handsets will be slowly introduced.

Thank you, Ericsson for the enlightenment of the 5G upcoming development. It will be nice to see if our local telco providers will engage with your services apart from DST.