The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Frank Maa° - DNB Markets, Research Division - Analyst
: So if I may, just a question of how you manage customers' wishes for exclusivity in the market, say, take the Telenor example, if this -- when Telenor
has done this innovation [starting] with you -- in Asia, they might, of course, want to keep the gains in those countries and probably would like you
not to work for their competition in those markets. How do you manage that? You grant exclusivity, if so, for a few years? Yes, some comments on
that would be great.
Peter Laurin - Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) - Senior VP, Head of Business Area Managed Services & Head of Segment Managed Services
Thank you for that, and thanks for -- all of you for listening. A great hour, and I hope you're as excited about this topic as we are. But when it comes
to that exclusivity question, specifically, we don't go into exclusivity like that. It probably has been, I just recall, I mean, I've been in this business
for a long time, and it's probably been [some of us] in the past, possibly.
But as we have now, I don't see that we have exclusivity anywhere, actually. We -- that would be really a contra our philosophy of one to many, so
to speak. So no, we don't do that, not even on a local markets, right?
And even so, if you take just the field side, right, I mean, the field operation that we do when we come to an end-to-end operation, it's great if we
can serve multiple customers in one country, like we do in any [other] geography.
So no, we don't do exclusivity. And actually, I don't believe it's in the interest of the customer either. It's really taking that cost down for all of us
with multi-skilled labor, I think, is good. All right.
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