Growing up in Gaeta, a coastal city in central Italy between Rome and Naples, Nunzio Mirtillo always wanted to be a doctor to help change people's lives for the better. But new medical graduates have trouble finding work right away, so he decided to study electronic engineering instead. It was a decision he took with his parents in mind as well.
"Being a doctor was a bit tougher to find a job, or you needed to wait a bit longer," he recalls. "I was good at maths in school so I decided to go into engineering in order to find a job quickly to the extent that my parents could have a rest, since the bills were still being paid by them."
After graduating with a master's degree in electronic engineering from Sapienza University, Mr Mirtillo entered compulsory military service, but his main focus was on getting as many job interviews as he could. Finally, he found the company where he has spent all of his career so far.
"I was doing every possible interview, because if you are called for an interview, you have the right to escape for few hours or one day of [military] service, so I did many interviews until I found Ericsson," he reminisces with a smile.
Software was a relatively new field in 1988, but Ericsson was already offering all of its engineers the opportunity to learn about software. The company's forward-looking mindset led Mr Mirtillo to conclude that his Swedish employer "must be a good company".
"They were taking care of their people by allowing them to learn and I was impressed by that and telecommunications, in my mind, was something that was needed in the world," he says.
He started with Ericsson as a software engineer specialising in mobile switching systems for seven years before being sent to Australia as a technical engineer and then as a technical leader. He was part of the launch of the first GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) network in the early 1990s.
Ericsson then gave him a chance to interact with customers as pre-sales architect in Italy and Sweden before he became head of business operations in Southeast Europe and then head of the company's sales network for Western Europe in 2006.
He subsequently became president of the company's Mediterranean region and in 2017 was named senior vice-president for Southeast Asia, Oceania and India from 2017 until now.
"The position was unexpected in a way because, why would they choose an Italian to go to Asia?" he says of the big move to Singapore, where he is now based. "But, I discussed it with my family, and I liked the idea so much because I always wanted to come to Asia and for me, it was a very good choice."
BETTER AND FASTER
"My dream was to be able to contribute to a better world, to do research or find something that would save people's lives," Mr Mirtillo answers when I asks him why he wanted to become a doctor when he was young. But he also believed strongly that engineering and telecommunications can change people's lives for the better as well.
"I thought telecommunications would contribute to a better world," he says. "Everyone will need to be connected and that has always been the basic insight of Ericsson as a company."
For example, in 2000, after the GSM network had been adopted in dozens of countries, most of the opinion leaders in the telecommunications sector thought the global limit would peak at one billion mobile subscriptions.
At Ericsson, however, the belief was that the limit would not be reached until everyone in the world owned a mobile phone. That is why it continued to invest in GSM while also keeping an eye on the third-generation (3G) technology that was starting to emerge at the turn of the millennium.
"That was one of the reasons why we have remained a successful company while many other companies have disappeared, because we kept that view in mind," says Mr Mirtillo.
Ericsson posted revenue of 210.8 billion Swedish krona (US$21.5 billion) in 2018 with net sales of 54.8 billion krona ($5.6 billion) in the second quarter of 2019.
Mr Mirtillo has seen how successive generations of mobile technology have been adopted worldwide, and he is confident that 5G will also find a huge market in Thailand and elsewhere in the region.
According to the "Digital in 2019" report by We Are Social, there are 4.4 billion mobile subscriptions in Asia Pacific (exceeding the population of 4.3 billion) and 1.9 billion active mobile social users. Thailand ranked first in the world for time spent using mobile internet at 5.13 hours per person per day.
Another study by Cisco forecasts that 4G connections will account for 54% of all mobile connections and 71% of total mobile traffic by 2022. And while 5G is expected to account for just 3.4% of connections and 11.8% of traffic in 2022, the average 5G connection will generate 2.6 times more traffic than the average 4G connection.
"Mobile broadband will need more and more gigabits at lower and lower cost so the natural solution to that is to use 5G," Mr Mirtillo explains.
In September, Ericsson and the local mobile operator DTAC introduced a 5G test bed at the Never Stop Café within DTAC House at Chamchuri Square, Bangkok. The internal 5G trial operates on the 28 GHz band, granted by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) for testing purposes. Download speeds were clocked at over 1.8 Gbps. But this kind of blistering speed is available only in the DTAC hotspot area for now.
CONSTANTLY INNOVATING
Two decades ago, the name Ericsson used to be synonymous only with mobile phones. Few consumers knew it as a network provider. Today, when people talk about smartphones, they talk about iPhone, Samsung and Huawei. But hanging up on the handset business has not hurt Ericsson in the least.
Ericsson has been a pioneer in mobile internet access, embarking on research and development under Ericsson Infocom Systems in 1996. With more than 49,000 patents, the company also has one of the strongest intellectual property rights portfolios in the industry.
"Ericsson has always been able to innovate and take the consequences of that," says Mr Mirtillo. "We are transforming all the time. From fixed-line to mobile and then from GSM to 3G and 4G and … in a way, we invented managed services which is now very important for us."
Managed services is a form of outsourcing whereby the service provider assumes responsibility for the functionality of a service and/or equipment and the customer pays a regular fee.
In January 2019, Ericsson launched new artificial-intelligence-based managed services for communication service providers. The Ericsson Operations Engine directly addresses complexity challenges as the industry moves toward 5G connections and practical application of the Internet of Things (IoT).
"If we have to transform, we will transform. If we have to train the old workforce then let's do that," he says. "We never compromise on investment because we are a medium- to long-term company where investment in competence and technology has always been the key, no matter what."
The mobile phone business, in his view, is more like a side business for the company while its core business is the network. The Ericsson handset was simply a tool to make sure that there was an end-to-end solution for the company, and it became a successful business for a while. But eventually, when the competition increased, it sold that part of the business and moved on.
"For us, what has been in focus, and is still in focus, is the core network, be it network radio or cloud computing, along with the support systems and the services around that," he says.
Two years ago, Ericsson revised its growth strategy to concentrate mostly on its core businesses including networks, digital services, managed services and emerging business to make sure it "will lead again" in the network segment. It doubled its R&D fund and has more than 24,000 employees working in the field now. It has also divested in areas where it believes it is not strong or those that are not core.
"We have decided to work only with operators and only on our core businesses, and we have simplified the structure of the company from ten regions to five market areas," says Mr Mirtillo. "And we have also put our customers in the centre again.
"After two years, this has proven to be quite successful. We are ahead of the curve and we have delivered what we have promised."
5G REVOLUTION
Ericsson is the first company to have 5G networks on four continents and the work is going faster than it had initially planned, Mr Mirtillo says. The factors determining where 5G is launched include spectrum availability, government interest, and the interest of the operators.
In Asia Pacific, Ericsson has launched 5G in Australia and South Korea, while India and Southeast Asia are in the early stages as most of the spectrum is not available from regulators yet.
"I think that between 2020 and 2021, the majority of the spectrum will be released in India and Southeast Asia and we will start to roll out 5G networks almost everywhere two years from now," says Mr Mirtillo.
By then, he believes, critical mass for the ultra-high-speed network will be available and the ecosystem will be ready, including handsets at lower costs.
The main challenge now is to make the spectrum available since the technology itself is less of an issue. Ericsson has already launched 5G in 18 commercial networks worldwide and the number of compatible smartphones is increasing.
"From the spectrum point of view, I do not see a big barrier in Thailand with the 2600-megahertz spectrum available and 26 Gigahertz, and with the currently available 4G technology, you should be able to launch 5G without any problem," he says. He predicts that Thailand will have a fully fledged 5G system in hotspots by the end of 2021.
When I ask Mr Mirtillo what 5G could bring, he replies that when 4G was launched, most experts believed only a few killer applications would be rolled out. But there turned out to be hundreds based on network availability, and he believes "it will be the same with 5G".
Enhanced gaming applications are among the first changes that have come with 5G in South Korea, while Industry 4.0 and IoT applications are also expected to flourish.
"Anything that has to do with latency and applications that are on the edge where low latency is required, that will obviously explode, including augmented reality along with any application that needs higher bandwidth," he says.
"Once the capability is there, I believe there will be so many opportunities, so it is important to have an ecosystem where applications can gain access to the capability and that is a big opportunity for the operators as well."
With business prospects looking bright, Mr Mirtillo feels more comfortable in his position, and that in turn allows him to enjoy his leisure time more. As an Italian, food is among his great passions.
Back in Italy, he produced his own homemade olive oil in his cellar for recipes and he brought some to Singapore with him. But Asia is becoming "very rich" in terms of diversity, and he's pleasantly surprised to see that most of the other Italian ingredients he needs can be found in the city-state. After two years, he is starting to settle in and learning to love Asian foods as well.
"In Singapore, about 90% of the time, my family and I will go out for all kinds of cuisine, except Italian because when it comes to Italian cuisine, our bar is very high," he says with a smile.
"Being in Asia now, when Asian cuisine is very popular in Italy, it would be senseless not to take the chance to eat Thai, Chinese, Indian and Singaporean foods so that is what we are enjoying right now."
When asked how long he expects to be in the region Mr Mirtillo smiles again: "Only the next ten to fifteen years. We like it a lot here."
