Ericsson does a little mission critical M&A

Swedish kit vendor Ericsson has dug up enough loose change to buy Spanish firm Genaker, which does Mission Critical Push-to-talk (MC-PTT) stuff.

In its simplest form this is old-school ‘walkie-talkie’ technology, as has been used by emergency services, security workers, etc for decades. For ‘mission critical’ networks, in which the most important thing is to always be able to communicate with everyone else on that network immediately, there is still no better model, it seems, until we’re all assimilated into some kind of hive mind.

The reason Ericsson is keen on it is that the 5G era has made mission-critical communications, private networks and bespoke comms services in general all the fashion in the industrial world. Since B2B is where most of the new cash from 5G is expected to come, if kit vendors aren’t all over it then they risk being overtaken by specialists and new entrants to that market.

“We have worked with Genaker as a partner in Mission Critical Applications for many years and we are now taking this step to further strengthen our end-to-end offering,” said Monica Zethzon, Head of Solution Area Communication Services, Ericsson. “We’re really excited that the Genaker team is joining us and that we can bring the value of their expertise to our customers.“

“It is an honour that Genaker becomes the base of Ericsson’s global MC-PTT offering,” said Miquel Teixidor, Co-founder and CEO of Genaker. “Together we will leverage the best of the two companies, and we’re excited about this opportunity to offer customers around the world our next-generation MC-PTT solution.”

Genaker only has a head-count of 30, so this isn’t a major acquisition in terms of size. But it takes on additional significance as a strategic statement of intent. When network slicing properly kicks in there is expected to be a lot of demand for bespoke networks tailored to specific use-cases. Ericsson is wise to be trying to skate to where the puck will be with moves like this.