As Ericsson’s Head of Engagement Practice in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Lars Stuber’s role extends from traditional active and passive network managed services, to IT managed services and opex sharing business models. However, Lars believes the managed services model remains relatively immature in SSA, creating opportunities to develop innovative new business models. A good example is transformation from network managed services into customer centric managed services (see figure 1).
Figure 1

TowerXchange: Where does passive infrastructure management services fit into your role and into Ericsson’s priorities in SSA? And how has the entry of the independent towercos into Africa affected that business?
Lars Stuber, Head of Engagement Practice, Managed Services, SSA, Ericsson:
I spend most of my time covering network managed services, within which management of active equipment remains Ericsson’s core business.