Ericsson D-Fifteen: driving U.S. innovation to 5G-enabled Industry 4.0

With commercial 5G well and truly launched and operational in the U.S., Ericsson is ramping up collaborative innovation to enable partners and U.S companies to benefit early and fully in the next 5G-powered industrial revolution, through the opening of D-Fifteen, a new co-creation center at Ericsson’s Silicon Valley facility.

Announced on April 23, and set to open mid-2019, the Santa Clara center will pursue innovative ideas and thought leadership based on the principles of: Dare, Design, Deliver.

The D-Fifteen name is a tribute to Ericsson founder Lars-Magnus Ericsson, his wife Hilda, and their partner Carl Johan Andersson, who created the company’s first products in a kitchen workshop at Drottninggatan 15 in Stockholm. This was essentially the company’s first innovation lab.

HOW WILL IT WORK?

Driven by Ericsson’s collaborative spirit, D-Fifteen will be an incubator for big ideas to push the boundaries of what mobile technology can do as the next industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, becomes a reality. Collaborative partners will avail of a high-powered platform for building impactful and unique solutions, driven by co-creation and innovative partnerships.

Customers, partners and the Silicon Valley ecosystem community will be invited to collaborate around how their products and services will be affected by 5G technologies, including edge computing and distributed cloud, automation and intelligence, 5G radio evolution and global IoT connectivity.

DRIVING 5G IN SILICON VALLEY

The 5G-connected facility is an indicator of Ericsson’s evolution in Silicon Valley, bringing multiple core capabilities together under one roof. The center will bring together key areas of Ericsson’s technology innovators into one location.

Early D-Fifteen initiatives include:

• D-15 IoT Studio: A hands-on testing ground, where Ericsson engineers will roll up their sleeves and put connected technology to the test.  
• D-15 Labs: A 5G testbed where service providers and partners will pressure test the multi-layered networks that are at the heart of the 5G experience and enable the promising technologies of the future like self-driving cars and the Industrial Internet of Things.

Margaret Herndon, Head of Marketing and Communications, Ericsson North America, says: ”D-Fifteen will be a place for experimentation and collaboration, a showcase for the promising technologies that 5G will empower. This facility will bring together the brightest minds in Ericsson and, working with our partners, we’ll tap into the fast-moving, boundary-breaking spirit of Silicon Valley to bring about the next evolution in mobile networks. We want our partners to dare, design and deliver all in one world-class facility.”