Joakim Reiter’s immense diplomatic experience near the top of the UN has stood him in good stead for his private sector career
Joakim Reiter of Vodafone: 'Covid, to some extent, brought back a understanding of what telecoms in a modern way is about.' Photograph: Julien Behal
Europe was behind on the shift from 3G to 4G, which is why the digitally native smartphone-first applications came from China and the US “This is the first generation of machine-to-machine communication,” he says. “The 5G standard is basically an industrial internet. If you are late with that, it means all your different factories – no matter if it is agriculture, pharmaceuticals, car manufacturers – they’re going to be behind in utilising 5G slicing and all the low-latency applications and robotics and other things compared to other jurisdictions.
“You don’t have to care about telecoms; a lot of people don’t. And they shouldn’t. A lot of policymakers don’t. And they maybe shouldn’t either. But what they really should care about is whether they have a competitive economy, whether the economy is modern, whether it creates the right jobs,” he says.
Vodafone is particularly keen on its Siro partnership in Ireland, a joint venture with the ESB that is bringing broadband to under-served parts of the country. That, says Reiter, is “a stroke of genius” Although things have started to return to the old normal, Vodafone is particularly keen on its Siro partnership in Ireland, a joint venture with the ESB that is bringing broadband to under-served parts of the country. That, says Reiter, is “a stroke of genius” that was a way of thinking differently about “fixed” and “mobile”.
“We think there should be an economic incentive for them to do so. It saves resources, it saves energy consumption,” he says. “Because once the network is congested, everyone in that area, all the end users, suffer the consequences. That makes no sense.”
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