KEY POINTS:
Close to 30 years after leaving New Zealand, Jeff Travers is back to lead the revitalisation of Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson.
Taking over as the New Zealand country manager at the end of the month, Travers is here catching up with staff and industry players before packing up his house in Libya.
Fifteen years with Ericsson has taken him from the company homeland of Sweden to Central Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
"This is where infrastructure is built and the growth is enormous, the activity is enormous," he said of those areas.
Travers says that when a mobile network was launched in Iran five million mobile sim cards were sold in three weeks.
"There were queues around the corner, there were people fighting on the street."
For Ericsson it involved a "very intense" period of fast infrastructure builds, Travers said.
After working in frontier telecommunications markets Travers was drawn back by the challenges of working in an established environment.
"I'm interested because it's my home and I want to contribute, but it's a different business model that's needed, it's a different way of working," he said.
Top of his "to do" list will be to re-establish Ericsson as a strong player in the marketplace.
Ericsson was used by Telecom to build its now-decommissioned 025 mobile network.
However, Telecom last year passed over the company and China's ZTE in favour of long-time infrastructure partner Alcatel-Lucent to build its new mobile network. Former Alcatel executive Ron Spithill is on the Telecom board.
Vodafone has strong ties with Nokia and aspiring third operator NZ Communications has signed up Chinese vendor Huawei for its planned network build.
Ericsson had been involved in TelstraClear's Tauranga-based "Unplugged" network before the project was cancelled last year.
"It doesn't normally serve a telco well to align with just one partner," said Travers.
"It's not normal around the world. Typically operators have two strategic partners in different fields. I know some of our big operators across the water have one strategic partner for the broadband and/or fixed and one for the mobile."
He cites the recent radio spectrum auctions, Telecom's $300 million investment in its new Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) network and what he sees as an active telecommunications sector as offering opportunities for Ericsson to develop its business here.
"Actually I think it's an acknowledgement we need to do more and now is the time. Maybe earlier was the time, but anyway, if earlier was not the time then now is," Travers said.
In the long term, Travers believes, Ericsson is well placed to take advantage of the development of media content sent via mobile or fixed broadband.
Travers said his New Zealand strategy would involve building up the organisation by adding to the workforce and bringing in expertise from abroad. For Travers personally it is time "to learn to be a real New Zealander again". "It's the small things you miss - it's food, the smells. Piha beach, I'm really just dying to get back there."
