India is an important market for Ericsson, not only as a telecom market but also as a global hub for R&D.
Our first challenge is to ensure safety of pilgrims, and we will use modern technology for that. We will strengthen our telecom network and will provide special mobile apps to the pilgrims at the time of registration.
Telecom is a dramatic success in India and our view is, respecting the political process, and respecting the fact that these are sovereign decisions, is that, approaching India as a friend.
One of my bosses happened to be one of the early architects of some of the ways Internet providers work. He taught me how the cables connect, how the telecom providers work... I learned how to make my own Ethernet cables, all the way up to running a small business.
Telecoms is a national business. There isn't a European market. There's no Telecom Italia in France.
France has a specificity - the market players who provide Internet access are the telecom operators, and all of the players are French. They had a habit of, let's say, getting along with each other, and the prices traditionally were very high.
So I rang up British Telecom, I said 'I want to report a nuisance caller', he said 'Not you again'.
The telecom industry pretends like it's not getting paid.
WhatsApp provides phone-number-based messaging, and people asked, 'Isn't that what SMS is?' Yes, but SMS is expensive, antiquated, and what WhatsApp did was modernize and level that playing field. For example, in Europe, if France wants to talk to Belgium, it's extraordinary costly because of border and telecom charges.
I've seen disgusting excess in business, and I've seen disgusting excess in Washington. But at the same time, I've certainly learned that Washington matters and that you can't ignore it, especially when you get into telecom.