When Börje Ekholm took over as CEO of Ericsson in early 2017, he quickly reversed a key strategy of his predecessor Hans Vestberg, and pulled back from targeting enterprise cellular opportunities directly. Understandably nervous of backlash from core MNO customers, he believed Ericsson should engage with enterprises only through operators. However, this caution saw Nokia leap ahead both in the number of enterprise and private networks it supplies (including some that exclude the MNO), and in perception as a B2B specialist. As the private networks landscape diversifies – enabled by shared spectrum, open architectures and network-as-a-service – there will be more and more deals, especially among large enterprises, that will not go through a traditional operator. Ekholm has been modifying…