Petra Schirren, president of Ericsson Gulf at Ericsson Europe, Middle East and Africa/Image: Supplied
Across the Middle East, 5G is entering a new phase of maturity — shifting from a connectivity enabler to a catalyst for enterprise transformation. Petra Schirren, president of Ericsson Gulf at Ericsson Europe, Middle East and Africa, believes the region is already leading globally in leveraging 5G and AI to transform industries such as logistics, oil and gas, and public safety.
“There’s a lot in public safety, a lot of interest from ports, logistics companies, airports, oil and gas; all these have been big industries for us,” Schirren said. “The benefits of AI and cloud combined can really both enable efficiency in the ways that industries run their operations, and provide security and safety for people working for them; then there is also new types of use cases for revenue generation.”
According to Schirren, industry adoption is progressing steadily as enterprises build trust and confidence in advanced network capabilities. “It takes a little bit of time to get industries and people to be comfortable with security, with trust as well…in changing the way that they do business, but it’s progressing every day,” she added.
Defining differentiated connectivity
As operators evolve their 5G offerings, differentiated connectivity is emerging as a key value driver — enabling businesses to prioritise performance parameters based on use cases. Schirren explained the concept using a relatable analogy:
“With differentiated connectivity and what capabilities that standalone brings, you can basically put differentiated performance depending on what you want to do with it,” she said. “One of the operators we work with describe it as simple as saying first, business and economy class.”
This distinction, she noted, allows operators and enterprises to optimise network experience according to demand. “It could be about latency, it could be about performance, it could be about speed,” Schirren said. “It’s a different user experience depending on what you’re using it for and what you’re willing to pay for.”
6G on the horizon
While 5G continues to transform industries, Ericsson is already investing heavily in 6G research and development. “Standardisation has just started,” Schirren said. “Then, of course, we have worked on R&D for a long time.”
She explained that 6G will go beyond connectivity, enabling networks with sensory and autonomous capabilities. “It’s a lot about sensing capability. It’s a lot about being able to do things in an autonomous way, being able to do things without human intervention,” she said.
Some of these capabilities are already being integrated into 5G networks. “We’re starting that already now with programmable networks for 5G as well,” Schirren added. “Some of those capabilities are already being introduced, but we started taking it one step further to make it kind of sensory determined.”
Driving sustainability through smarter networks
Ericsson’s sustainability goals are deeply intertwined with its technology roadmap. “We’re working on our own products to ensure that every generation that we release is more efficient than the previous one,” Schirren said.
The company aims to achieve Net Zero emissions across its value chain by 2040, with a milestone of reaching Net Zero in its operations and a 50 per cent reduction in supply chain and portfolio emissions by 2030. “We work with all of our customers here, both on optimising the energy efficiency of their networks, optimising the site performance, and we also have solutions like connected recycling as well, where we’re actually taking care of the waste that is generated from our industry,” she said.
“For us, it’s one of our biggest core values to work on sustainability because we believe we want to be able to do more with less,” Schirren added. “As we do connectivity and innovation, we also have to care about the planet and the sustainability of what we put out in the market.”
At GITEX Global 2025, Ericsson highlighted the power of partnerships in accelerating digital transformation. “Of course, we work with our CSP partners. They’re one of our prime customers today, but we also have collaborations with other parts of the ecosystem,” Schirren said.
She emphasised that achieving national visions such as UAE’s Digital Transformation Strategy 2031 requires collective effort. “It’s very important to realise that if we want to bring the digitisation of nations vision to life by 2031, no one can do it alone,” she said. “It goes all the way from governments to our customers to, for example, other providers that might have particular applications or devices to run on top of our networks.”
Schirren expects the convergence of 5G, cloud, and AI to transform every sector in the region over the next five years. “When that all comes together, I think you will have impacts for every single industry,” she said. “Some [industries] might find it easy to adopt and go faster, but I think over time, it will impact all the parts, whether that’s consumers, every single enterprise or governmental operations.”
She pointed to growing investment in innovation clusters. “We’ve spoken with some of our customers now that are opening AI parks to bring together the complete ecosystem,” Schirren said. “Change will happen. Either you decide to be a part of it, or you else will sit on the sidelines.”
AI-driven connectivity in action
Ericsson is already deploying AI-enabled, mission-critical connectivity solutions across the GCC. “We work a lot with our customers on AI driven autonomous networks on the journey there,” Schirren said.
The company’s technologies are enabling predictive maintenance, network optimisation, and operational resilience. “We introduce a way of optimising energy efficiency of the networks, optimising root cause analysis for being able to predict when something happens rather than react when it has happened,” she explained.
“These types of new algorithms are part of what we deliver, as products, solutions and services,” Schirren said. “And with these capabilities as well, our customers are able to bring new services to the market as well, which is happening on a continuous basis.”
Ericsson’s vision for the Gulf is clear: to help nations and enterprises transition from being adopters of technology to architects of intelligent, sustainable, and autonomous digital ecosystems. As Schirren noted, progress is already visible and the foundations being laid today with 5G and AI will define how the region leads in the 6G era.
