Ericsson appoints Todd Ashton as President of Sri Lanka, Malaysia

With 17-years’ experience in the ICT industry, Ashton takes on a new role as President for Ericsson Malaysia and Sri Lanka

Global mobile data traffic doubled between Q3 2011 and Q3 2012, and is expected to grow 12 times between 2012 and 2018, driven by video. Ericsson anticipates similar trends in the region

Globally, there were an additional 13 million LTE subscription in Q3 2012 and numbers are predicted to reach 1.6 billion by 2018.

Ericsson announced the appointment of Todd Ashton recently, as President and Country Manager for Malaysia and Sri Lanka. Born in Washington DC, Ashton has been based in Sweden since 1998, serving in various executive roles in Ericsson AB.

In his prior role as global head of sales for Ericsson consulting and systems integration, Ashton focused on working with Ericsson customers worldwide to monetise data by implementing new pricing packages enabled by advanced network capabilities, improve customer experience through executing network and service performance improvement programs, and achieve economic efficiency gains through process improvements and network and IT platform consolidations.

Ashton also worked in leadership roles across several portfolios within Ericsson, including IP backbone networks, OSS, BSS, and IP multimedia software and services.

In line with the global trends reported in the recently published Ericsson mobility report, Ashton expects mobile data traffic in the region to double in 2013. “We have seen many positive developments in telecommunications in Sri Lanka over the last few years. Similar to what we have experienced in developing markets in the region, it is very likely that we will see strong growth in mobile, as well as broadband penetration, which will in turn lead to greater mobile data traffic.”

The report states that mobile data traffic worldwide is expected to grow with a CAGR of around 50% (2012-2018), driven mainly by video. This entails growth of around 12 times by the end of 2018. “We see similar growth in the region, especially as people increasingly use mobile data in their everyday life,” Ashton confirms.  

It is forecasted that LTE population coverage in Asia Pacific (APAC) will increase to 60% by 2017, surpassing the global average of 50% in the same year. By 2017 APAC will account for around two thirds of the world’s LTE population coverage.

Ashton expects that the adoption rate in the region will grow rapidly with the latent demand for broadband services. LTE is the fastest-developing system in the history of mobile communications in terms of build-out and uptake.

LTE is currently being deployed in all regions, and will have subscriptions increasing from around 55 million at the end of 2012 to an estimated 1.6 billion in 2018.

“Ericsson remains committed to working with our customers in Sri Lanka to create the best mobile experience for subscribers nationwide,” Ashton said.  

“As smartphones and tablets continue to become more affordable in this part of the region, this will place greater demand on the networks and will challenge operators to manage and tune the network to manage the increased load.

“This is where Ericsson has a proven track record, delivering and managing the best performing and most profitable networks in the world.”

He also said: “These are truly exciting times for the Sri Lankan market. I am looking forward to sharing my global experience and continue our effort to develop the networked society for the people in Sri Lanka.”