LIVE FROM MWC LAS VEGAS 2024: T-Mobile US’ Ulf Ewaldsson outlined how his company has prepared its network to go beyond consumer services and into enterprise verticals for years.

Ewaldsson, president of technology, hit all his company’s highlights during its 5G journey including launching the first 5G standalone (SA) network in 2020, enabling network slicing, 5G private networks and carrier aggregation.

“We were a 3G player where everybody else was a 4G player,” he said. “Many doubted that T-Mobile could ever become a network leader. But we proved them wrong.”

He noted T-Mobile is poised to take its leadership position in 5G consumer services into the enterprise sector.

“The biggest potential of 5G is really in the enterprise market and this is what’s happening,” he said. “It’s powering our enterprise market in a way that we have never seen before.”

Ewaldsson highlighted the operator’s work with Major League Baseball, which includes installing private 5G in each of the 30 ballparks as well as providing backoffice capabilities and ticketless entry for fans.

He also took a stab at competitors by stating the operator’s T-Priority service for first responders is the first to use an entire 5G network instead of building a smaller, separate one.

With network slicing, T-Mobile can offer a better network for first responders when there’s high levels of congestion by steering and managing traffic more efficiently.

“We did network slicing last year, and this year the programmable networks with APIs, 5G RedCap for cheap and affordable l5G modules, and it doesn’t stop there,” Ewaldsson said. “We just announced in our capital markets day that we will go to 5G Advanced by the end of this year.

“We’re going to go on a journey of AI that will take us into the future and eventually take us all the way into the 6th generation of mobile communication.”