Vonage chief sees 5G and SaaS benefits from Ericsson acquisition

▤ Summary

Completion came after Ericsson had passed all the regulatory challenges, including, last week, clearance from the Committee on Foreign Investments in the US (CFIUS). This partnership will strengthen our offerings to businesses across the globe by leveraging Ericsson’s leadership in 5G, global market presence and strong R&D capabilities.” The former Dell executive, who joined Vonage only a year ago, will now be head of what Ericsson calls business area global communications platform. This is very different from the Vonage that industry guru Jeff Pulver created in 1998 as Min-X.com, intended to be an electronic exchange for trading phone minutes but swiftly changed its name and converted into a voice over IP (VoIP) company, offering cheap worldwide voice services. Börje Ekholm, Ericsson’s president and CEO, said: “With Vonage’s suite of communications solutions – UCaaS, CCaaS and communications APIs [applications program interfaces] – Ericsson will further expand its offerings into the enterprise space. He said that 5G, the new mobile generation, will be “an innovation platform, unlike anything we’ve seen before, offering almost limitless opportunities to develop super-fast, highly reliable, low-latency and mission-critical services”.

▦ Linked Companies

Vonage

$1B+