Ericsson has expanded its 5G smart factory in Lewisville, Texas, with an additional $50 million investment to grow local production of 5G infrastructure devices.
The 5G smart factory is building next-generation 5G infrastructure for the U.S. market. Ericsson previously made an investment of $100 million in the factory in 2020, which produces 5G equipment and antenna system radios as well as base stations.
The expanded 300,000 square-foot facility employs more than 500 people and the investment will allow Ericsson to deliver existing and new radios and basebands in addition to open radio access network (Open RAN)-ready products for U.S. customers.
The latter is important considering Ericsson late last year signed a five-year deal with U.S. telecom AT&T to provide 5G commercial Open RAN deployments for North America. The deal would allow AT&T to convert 70% of its traffic flow across open-capable platforms by 2026.
“With this expansion, we can accelerate the production of Ericsson’s advanced Massive MIMO radios and our latest RAN Compute platform, all proudly made in the USA, addressing the evolving demands of our US customers and reinforcing our commitment to technological leadership,” said Yossi Cohen, president and head of Ericsson North America.
Ericsson said the expansion is part of its strategic investment in North America that also includes:
- Acquisition of 5G enterprise vendor Cradlepoint.
- Opening of the Global Utilities Innovation Center in Plano, Texas.
- Acquisition of 5G service provider Vonage.
- Opening of the 5G ASIC Design Center in Austin, Texas.
- Creation of the Global Artificial Intelligence Accelerator innovation hubs in California
- Establishment of a New Radio network software R&D center in Austin, Texas.
