2024–25 Thought Leaders: Tim Karamitos

What opportunities do you predict for the growth of your industry in 2025?

We have seen big growth in the use of LEO satellite technology in emergency services and utilities, especially in regional parts of the country, which opens a lot of opportunity for Ericsson. Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions enable users to switch between LEO satellite and cellular connectivity, with that connectivity being constantly monitored, even on the move. The other opportunity for us is around the security of those satellite connections. Ericsson offers secure link bonding, which is built on a true zero-trust foundation.

In addition, the advancement of private 5G networks internationally is giving organisations a powerful connectivity foundation to meet new data growth and operational needs without sacrificing visibility, control or security. This allows for predictable capacity and deterministic performance while improving latency.

Adoption in Australia has been slow for a couple of reasons. First, spectrum, until now, has been limited to remote areas of Australia, which drove initial adoption of private cellular networks in mining and oil & gas companies. Area-wide licences add national spectrum access for industry that includes remote and rural Australia, regional centres and capital cities. Second, many organisations have yet to realise how private wireless networks can be harnessed to resolve connectivity issues with Wi-Fi that have been holding their operations back.

A strength of private 5G networks is their use of licensed spectrum, which prevents unwanted interference and disruption to network operations. With the release of mid-band spectrum as area-wide licences, private 5G networks are starting to see growth in Australia, enabling enterprises to embrace a wide range of 5G use cases.

With Australians having experienced several major telco and technology outages over the past 12 months, what is your company doing to enable more resilient communications solutions?

The key for organisations to ensure reliable, uninterrupted connectivity is having a failover connection. This can be fibre primary connectivity failing over to cellular in the case of terrestrial accidents and human-made or natural disasters, or it can be dual SIM modems, failing over from one telecommunications carrier to another if there is a network provider glitch. Ericsson’s Cradlepoint routers and adapters, available for fixed, mobile and remote locations, are managed through NetCloud Manager, which includes policies that can immediately direct traffic to pass across the wireless link. Once the wired link is restored, traffic flow automatically returns to normal — in most cases, unnoticed by users and customers. With SD-WAN capabilities available, users can set granular traffic policies across multiple wired and wireless links. In the case that an organisation depends on wireless links as their primary connection, automated SIM-based carrier selection will auto-select when the primary wireless connection degrades below suboptimal levels.

As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to spread, how big a role do you see this technology playing in the critical comms industry?

Ericsson solutions feature AI functionality that makes 5G networks smarter, simpler and more secure. Being the first enterprise 5G router vendor to adopt an AI model uniquely focused on cellular networking, Ericsson offers organisations using critical communications centralised flow-level visibility for traffic analysis and forensics, leveraging AI to establish a baseline of normal traffic patterns for the most common 5G use cases (distributed IoT, vehicles, sites) and flagging any anomalies indicating signs of a breach.

Ericsson NetCloud AIOps Dashboard simplifies the ongoing operations of enterprise networks leveraging 5G SASE capabilities. The NetCloud AI model aggregates learning into a single dashboard that identifies areas of performance degradation, isolates the cause of the issue, and pinpoints the affected sites, users and applications. With a unique focus on cellular networking, NetCloud AIOps will turn cellular signal quality indicators, such as proximity to cell tower, signal quality and signal strength, into actionable insights to enhance performance.

Are there any new or growing sectors that will be particularly reliant on critical comms in 2025 and beyond?

In Australia, we have unique geographic and population distribution considerations that can create communication challenges for any industry. For organisations operating in regional parts of the country, fibre or cellular connectivity is often not an option, either because there is no broadband available in those areas, or for an organisation that provides services in the field or from a vehicle, there are no cellular towers located close enough to provide cellular connectivity.

SA Power Networks is one example of a utilities organisation that needed to find a way to improve communication both internally and with customers during power outages. Operating in highly remote locations and often having limited services and infrastructure available, staff at South Australia’s sole electricity provider had to travel long distances to access cellular coverage, creating challenges for utility response and repair teams. SA Power Networks deployed ruggedised Ericsson Cradlepoint routers across more than 170 vehicles to facilitate active Starlink satellite connectivity with cellular failover.

Network performance is managed and monitored via Ericsson’s NetCloud Manager for single-pane-of-glass visibility from anywhere. With network connectivity no longer a constraint, crews can accomplish more digital tasks and make onsite decisions, significantly reducing travel time and administrative effort. This enables faster responses, fewer repeat trips and improved customer restoration times.

Tim Karamitos is a Regional Sales Manager with strong business acumen, focused on driving business innovation for his customers. With a strong technical background, Tim offers organisations years of experience and analytical thinking, working with many customers on their digital transformation journeys, including many Australian universities and emergency services organisations.