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Ericsson To Build 'Fully-Automated' 5G Factory In the US By Early 2020 (zdnet.com) 108

Ericsson announced its plans to build a 5G factory in the U.S. sometime early next year. "The factory will be the Swedish telco equipment maker's first fully-automated factory, the company said, and will be used to produce 5G radios designed for urban areas," reports ZDNet. "It will also make Advanced Antenna System radios that it said are components for large-scale deployments of 4G and 5G networks for both rural and urban coverage." From the report: Ericsson did not provide details about where the factory will be located, but the company has plans to initially employ around 100 people at the factory, which will have "highly automated operations." Ericsson is currently signed on by T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, US Cellular, and GCI to help build out their respective 5G mobile networks. According to the Ericsson's latest mobility report, North America is expected to lead in the adoption of 5G, with the company predicting that 63% of North American mobile subscriptions will be 5G-based in 2024. Fierce Wireless says the company has made a direct investment of about $100 million, "which will kick in during the third quarter of this year."
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Ericsson To Build 'Fully-Automated' 5G Factory In the US By Early 2020

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  • I wonder when the directors of these big corps are thinking of automating their own - rather easy - jobs? Somehow I suspect we may be waiting a while for that one...

    • Well automation is a natural consequence of competition in the market economy. Companies that can't compete soon go bankrupt, and employees will have to look elsewhere for jobs. But the positive consequence are that consumers get better and cheaper products, and remaining workers get better jobs requiring more training and education.
      • Someone has been keeping up with the last 170 years of economic theory.

        Well done.

        Just because people don't like the politics of Marxism doesn't mean that the historical analysis and economic theory of Marxism is incorrect.

    • "I wonder when the directors of these big corps are thinking of automating their own - rather easy - jobs? "

      This one will be "fully automated", there's nobody else there but him. He has even to pick up the phone.

      • Does "director" mean something different in American Business English to what it does in British English.

        A company will have a board of directors ranging from one (for sole-trader companies, to a handful (SMEs, up to a couple of hundred employees) to a couple of dozen (for multinationals). Most factories/ worksites/ contract/ business units will never see a director in their life.

  • Well, nearly anyway.
  • Out of that 100 workers 97 will have special skills and be brought in from afar leaving 3 jobs for locals. Cleaning toilets or cutting grass and such. Bringing in a large factory may have no local benefit at all but can offer pollution and other issues.
    • by CanadianMacFan ( 1900244 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @06:42AM (#58833574)

      It also said, "the company has plans to initially employ around 100 people," which means their bringing in around 100 specialists to set up all of the machinery. There will probably be about 10 people working at the plant after that at any one time. A few people to take the inputs out of boxes and set it up for the robots to use, a few more to take the outputs and put those into larger boxes to ship, someone to load/unload trucks, a security guard, and a manager. Of course the security guard will be contracted out, along with anyone who does the cleaning, and yard maintenance.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Of course the security guard will be contracted out, along with anyone who does the cleaning, and yard maintenance.

        For $10/hr or less, no health insurance or dental and they will always be scheduled for less than 40 hours a week. And their schedules will vary from week to week so making any long term plans is impossible - or having a second job that does the exact some thing.

        Ask for time off to actually see doctor or dentist or whatever? Well, the agency is called and a replacement is demanded. They don't want to take the time or effort to work around some peon's schedule.

        The way the working poor is treated in this cou

        • That is what you get for generations of voting for politicians who encourage the police to kill trade unionists.

          But the problem of voting for politicians will soon be solved. When Trump gets his coup and installs a hereditary presidency, the only thing to worry about is whether you'll be fighting for High Lord Jared, or Domina Ivanka.

  • by mrwireless ( 1056688 ) on Thursday June 27, 2019 @05:56AM (#58833498)

    Working in the privacy field, I'm not a big fan of 5G. It uses way more precise triangulation and tracking.

    It needs this because in order to reach the very high speeds beam forming is used, and this requires the antenna to know where the device is.

    The precision is shifting from 100m average accuracy to 10m average accuracy. And with that people may lose a lot of 'plausible deniability. Imagine a politician in the red light district. Now he/she can say "I was there, but I did not see a hooker". But with 5G you can pinpoint people inside houses, all from the 'serverside'.

    We should have a public debate about this, but we're not having it.

    • by mentil ( 1748130 )

      Privacy is about as sexy as security, as it tends to be a list of things you can't do, or shouldn't do without doing X first.
      And it's trivial to convince plebes that someone's privacy should be violated because they look a little sketchy.

      • You dig deep enough you find that everyone is sketchy in some way or another. Of course if you have enough money and/or power you can mask any part of your life you want. But if you actually have to work for a living? Are nobody? Forget about it, you're meat.
    • If you want people to be concerned about privacy then you're using a bad example. Try coming up with an example with a profession that people respect or care about. Escorts are probably seen as more respectable than politicians. Can't see how you can be less respectable than them.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Local Town Hall Meeting:

      Experts: Hi there, welcome all for coming. We'll be discussing 5G.

      Yokel 1: Errrmmm....what's 5G?

      repeat for i = 1 to 20 {
      Experts: (a paragraph explaining 5G)(i) So, what do you think?

      Yokel i: I don't understand 5G, could you explain it again.
      }

      Experts: So there you have it. What do you think?

      Yokel 1: You said this had to do with privacy implications. What do you mean?

      repeat for i = 1 to 20 {
      Experts: (a paragraph explaini

    • Funny that the comment I wanted to make was "Is it just me or does anyone else feel like this whole '5G' thing is going to somehow be used to invade our privacy and surveil us all on a whole new level", and here the first comment I read is yours which more or less mirrors that.
    • There is no written or agreed upon standard for what 5G is. So I have no idea what you're talking about.

  • The machines are going to build networking equipment that will interface with other machines. So humans get QoS and data caps, while the machines get unlimited data usage and the highest prioritization.
    You fools, don't you see what this will lead to?!

  • I'd be curious to know whether the level of 'fully automated' they have in mind actually departs all that markedly from current practice.

    It's not as though hand stuffing and soldering has been an option for big complex boards loaded with fine pitch BGAs and teeny passives for some time now; and a pick-and-place slapping components onto the board while a machine vision camera verifies alignment is already pretty heavy automation.

    I'd assume that a setup in a high cost country will have fewer people doin
  • You mean, it is going to take them about six months to build it? Either they have alien technology to help them in the effort, or else this is going to be a kind of Mickey Mouse factory.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    It was mentioned during a town hall that the factory is being built in the US so the components/products built there would not end up on a banned import list. They have spent more than a year moving production out of geopolitical sensitive areas so there would be no impact to their US customers.

    • by tomhath ( 637240 )

      It was mentioned during a town hall...

      Well then, that means it must be true.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        It may or may not be true, but it's certainly plausible. Increased automation decreases the advantage of areas with low wages.

  • Fully automated with 100 workers. Sounds like "self-driving" which requires 1 or 2 "safety drivers" on board. Silly tech companies.

  • Finally we are getting back those manufacturing jobs we so desperately need /s

  • The west needs to return to building factories on both sides of the pond. For nat sec and QC reasons.
  • "Player Piano" is an increasingly topical story about a small group of people who run a huge, mostly automated manufacturing facility and how it effects the community of people who used to be needed. This story feels a lot like that.

  • Sony boasted about making the Walkman without human hands long ago. The reckoned that a few of the steps were not actually worth automating but they did so anyway just to make the point.

Many people are unenthusiastic about their work.

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