Ericsson, one of most legendary names in wireless, traditionally has been hounded by criticism that it wasn't strong in North America. Yet, it's well-positioned to help Cingular Wireless tackle its upcoming UMTS/HSDPA upgrade. Angel Ruiz, president and CEO of Ericsson North America, recently spoke with Telephony's Dan O'Shea about Ericsson's position in the region, its corporate reorganization and the benefits of HSDPA.

On Ericsson's North American profile: Our position in North America is very different than what it was a few years ago. We used to have a third of the customer base here that we have now. I serve on the CTIA board, and I can look around the room at all of these different carriers and know that we do business with them. Cingular was our biggest account here even before its acquisition happened. We host MMS services for a lot of carriers, and we have our foot in the door to get more business. Twenty-seven percent of our overall revenue comes from services now. We hold forums with our carrier customers every six months or so to talk about where the market is going, and what they tells us plays a big part in where we focus our R&D efforts.

On Carl-Henric Svanberg's first two years as CEO of Ericsson corporate: Most of the executives with Ericsson now have been in those positions for less than two years, and many of them are in their 40s, so he has made a lot of changes and clearly prepared the company for the long haul. We had 107,000 employees worldwide before, and now we have 45,000 to 50,000. We're a conservative company that doesn't make foolish moves, but he's infused the company culturally with an aggressiveness it didn't have before.

On HSDPA: We've been pleasantly surprised by HSDPA's overall performance. You will see a lot more video streaming and mobile TV, but it's going to be interesting to see how the market reacts to more bandwidth. It's like when you're waiting in a doctor's office for an hour — you'll be able to pull out your phone and watch a movie. We're just scratching the surface with applications.