London

Lars Magnus Ericsson, Spotify, Skype, minecraft are just some of the innovations that have

have seen the light in Stockholm.

We are proud that Sweden is at the top of the list in terms of innovations per capita in the

world. Compared with the most innovative regions within and outside Europe, it has been

shown that Stockholm is the most knowledge-intensive region outside the US.

In Stockholm you will find Kista Science City, one of the world’s leading ICT clusters. A

world-leading innovation zone and international center for wireless technology, broadband

and mobile applications and services. Kista is the base for the largest concentration of IT

researchers in northern Europe.

I wonder if Lars Magnus Ericsson could dream about this development when he built his first

phone at the end of the 18th

century. In the house next to Ericsson’s first factory, on the very

same street, you will find Stokab today, the IT-infrastructure company of Stockholm.

Stokab, as many of you know, provides the world´s largest open fibre network. Today 90

percent of the households and nearly 100 percent of the companies have fibre connections.

Over 100 operators and service providers are active in Stockholm and thanks to Stokab they

are able to design their own network without being dependent on any competitor. So there are

many players in Stockholm who need equipment.

Although Stokab have built fiber networks since 1994 it continues the build-out, now to all

nursing homes in the city. In Stockholm we think it's important that everyone has access to

fibre. Next year 9000 elderly persons will have their own fibre connections with speeds up to

1 Gigabit per second in their specially designed homes.

The well-developed fibre network has also enabled the deployment of 4G. I think Stockholm

is the only city in the world who has four parallel 4G/LTE networks. So there’s no problem to

be connected in Stockholm.

With this I would like to welcome you all to Stockholm, the city where Charles K. Kao 2009

received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking achievements concerning the

transmission of light in fibers for optical communication.

Thank you for choosing to locate next years conference in Stockholm. A world-class city.