Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg Explains How He's Going to Connect the World to the Internet on 'Re/code Decode'

It’s popular in Silicon Valley right now for CEOs to talk about their plans to capture developing markets in areas like China and Africa.

Ericsson’s Hans Vestberg, CEO of one of the world’s largest mobile and wireless technology companies, is one of the people responsible for making that possible. On this week’s episode of the "Re/code Decode" podcast, hosted by Executive Editor Kara Swisher, Vestberg discusses how his company is going to do it.

He talked about how cheaper hardware and software development is making phones more accessible, and what’s necessary to build a global Internet infrastructure to support those devices.

"If you lower the average price of a smartphone by $10, 100 million [more] people on Earth can afford it," Vestberg said on the show. "[In 2010], I think it was 20 countries in the world that had a broadband [Internet access] plan. Now, 144 countries of 193 have a broadband plan. And that’s only the beginning."

Later in the show, in a special dispatch from last week’s Code/Mobile conference, The Verge’s Lauren Goode talks with Kara Swisher about the wearables market (the CEOs of both Jawbone and Fitbit were in attendance), and Mark Bergen unpacks what’s going on with Google’s traditional moneymaker, search.

If you like what you hear on "Re/code Decode," you can also head over to "Re/code Replay," an archive of audio content from our events and interviews by Kara Swisher, Walt Mossberg, Peter Kafka, Ina Fried and more. We’ve already published about 30 episodes from past events, including all of the Code 2015 sessions, and we’ll add more over time.

Every episode of each show will be available in two places: On our site at http://recode.net/podcasts and on Apple iTunes (here for "Re/code Decode" and here for "Re/code Replay"). We’ll be adding more distributors soon and new episodes weekly. And you can follow @recode on Twitter for updates on upcoming guests.

If you like what we’re doing, please write a review on iTunes — and if you don’t, just strafe Kara on Twitter. You can also suggest guests for the show there and we’ll try our level best to nab them for a Red Chair interview.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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