Ericsson..

just quickly going to touch upon Ericsson.. the first industrial employer I had after graduating and spending 2 years as journalist and producer. Ericsson is one of these amazing companies that has a tremendous impact on the local countries development and efforts. In Finland, you have Nokia. In Gothenburg area, you have Volvo and in Stockholm (actually Sweden), you have Ericsson with all its spin-offs.

In Lund, we have a global centre of talents for baseband modem, which can be seen in the spin-offs from Ericsson: ST-Ericsson and Sony Mobile, where the of the R&D for these companies are base-band and radio in Lund. Huawei recently setup an R&D Center, headed by the former Ericsson-exec, Tord Wingren. Guess where? Lund...

The impact that Ericsson has in the Swedish industry and the world's telecommunications can not be under-estimated. The close co-operation with the former Televerket, with their genius chief engineer, late Östen Mäkitalo (whom I had the honor to meet just short time before his unexpected death), have led to today's revolutionary changes in how we communicate through the mobile phone. It was the 70's and 80's joint R&D between the two companies that commercialized the mobile phone telephony - first with NMT and later with GSM.

Silicon Alley in Stockholm, Kista has numerous R&D centers, university programs and is probably the largest concentration of skilled wireless engineers in the world.

I hope to get back more to Ericsson given the monumental impact they have on today's wireless industry and the local businesses in Sweden.