Ericsson Doubles Down on Singtel and Telstra in Automation Push

Ericsson signed a five-year agreement with Singtel today (20 October) to scale 5G-Advanced in Singapore, one of three announcements this week that tie the Swedish vendor closer to two of Asia-Pacific's biggest operators.

The deal extends a collaboration first announced in March. Ericsson says it sets a longer roadmap for 5G-Advanced and for enabling new AI capabilities for industries — the vendor's phrase, so treat the ambition accordingly. No financial terms were disclosed, which at this stage of the 5G-Advanced cycle is par for the course.

Singtel CEO Ng Tian Chong framed the logic in terms of demand rather than technology for its own sake. "As AI becomes more embedded in how we live and work, networks will need to support far more complex applications, from autonomous machines and real-time analytics to the AI tools people use every day," he said.

That's a CEO describing a workload problem. Whether five years of 5G-Advanced investment solves it will depend on enterprise uptake, which so far across the region has been steadier than spectacular.

What happened during the Singapore state visit?

The Singtel announcement landed a day after Ericsson hosted the signing of a "trusted technology" declaration at its Stockholm headquarters, timed with a Singaporean state visit to Sweden. Diplomatic theatre, certainly, but it gave the vendor a stage.

On that same stage, Ericsson revealed a 6G research group it will coordinate, pulling in researchers from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The project kicks off next month.

Its remit: exploring how new positioning technologies using AI and 6G can "catalyse safe, secure and reliable autonomous systems" — again, vendor language. The target sectors named are healthcare, transport, manufacturing, logistics and emergency services. A list that broad usually signals early days.

Still, the timing matters. Standards work on 6G is gathering pace industry-wide, and Ericsson is positioning itself as the broker between two governments' research establishments rather than a solo bidder. That's a cheaper seat at the table than most.

Where does Telstra fit in?

Separately, Ericsson extended its collaboration with Telstra on autonomous networks, building on an agreement inked in October 2025. The earlier phase, Ericsson said, established a framework for exploring "business-driven use cases."

The next phase moves up the stack. Ericsson describes the focus as "the knowledge, trust and governance foundations needed to support the next stages of network autonomy" — less about automating tasks, more about deciding what the network can be trusted to decide.

As part of this, the pair will lead a working group intended to publish outcomes and support "wider industry influence and adoption." Translation: Telstra and Ericsson want their approach to become the industry's approach, and they're willing to share the homework to get there.

Telstra chief architect Mark Sanders put it more precisely than most autonomy rhetoric manages. "Autonomous networks require more than the automation of individual tasks," he said. "They depend on a shared understanding of what the network is, what it is expected to do and how much confidence can be placed in the knowledge supporting each decision."

"By working with Ericsson on common approaches to knowledge and trusted agency, we can help address these foundational challenges and contribute to the industry's progress towards more interoperable and dependable network autonomy," Sanders added.

It's a refreshingly modest pitch. Nothing here promises a network that runs itself by Q4. Instead, the two are tackling the unglamorous prerequisites — knowledge models, trust, governance — that have kept network autonomy more slideware than software to date.

What ties the three together?

Read side by side, the announcements sketch Ericsson's week, and arguably its strategy: long-duration operator contracts (Singtel), standards-shaping consortia (Telstra), and pre-standard research positioning (the 6G group). Three bets, one theme — trust and automation in next-generation networks.

The Singtel deal runs five years. The Telstra working group starts publishing whenever it starts publishing. The 6G research project begins next month. Ericsson, it seems, is content to let the deadlines do the talking.