What a difference a year makes. This time last year, 5G deployment was just getting underway in earnest. Now the technology is all over the globe, but there were signs deployment could be slowing, even before COVID-19.

Telcos understand that to survive and compete in a fast-changing world, they cannot continue to do things the way they always have. Sarah Wray asks if they really can change – and fast.

Ericsson and Orange Belgium are working with the manufacturer to support intelligent manufacturing via 4G and 5G in future.

Connected vehicles are a great example of what needs to go right in an ecosystem to succeed and the many obstacles to a high enough level of interoperability. By Annie Turner

Ulrich Grote, Chair, Ultra-low Energy (ULE) Alliance, explains why use of landlines is booming, along with the demand for high-quality calls at home.

Martin Garner of CCS Insights looks at the European Commission's new white paper on artificial intelligence, Europe's need to play catch-up and Microsoft's progress.

Euskaltel’s strategy is to leverage the Virgin brand, offer simple, one-price converged products and “[pick] off the soft underbelly of the big three”.

Dimitris Mavrakis, Research Director at ABI Research, is sceptical of the plan, launched towards the end of last year, but has some recommendations for success.

5G promises a world of unprecedented speed and differentiated quality of service with the potential to unleash a wide array of use cases, new services and business models. Network slicing is the cornerstone of the 5G architecture that supports this. By Oren Marmur, VP, Head of NFV, Amdocs

Yesterday’s announcement limiting Huawei’s presence in the UK’s full-fibre and 5G networks underlined just how crucial fibre is to 5G – and convergence. But it's not the whole story writes Annie Turner.

John Strand of Strand Consult argues that restricting the use of Huawei and ZTE’s equipment from networks would not harm Europe’s mobile operators, nor meaningfully reduce competition or delay rollout – but it could greatly improve security.

ISA is also what telecoms professionals need to do to win in IoT – whatever the sector, in this pivotal year.

It is just over a year since the world’s first commercial 5G service went live, so this feels like as good a time as any to take stock and assess progress over the past 12 months, says Kester Mann, Director, Consumer and Connectivity, with CCS Insight.

Gartner warns that many infrastructure and operations (I&O) issues are not obvious now, but will “cascade” as the use of AI and edge computing proliferates.