Cellular standards are often criticised from the moment they are released, with LTE attacked for its lack of reliability and 3G for its speeds, but BT is among a growing number of telcos confident that 5G will get it right.

Spectrum allocation will be vital for the development of 5G, Qualcomm has warned, urging governments to ensure operators can buy chunks of more than 100MHz of contiguous frequency.

Nokia is hoping its own recent experiences integrating a new company will give it the edge in transforming operators' networks as they shift to the cloud.

Jean-Claude Juncker's state of the union address offered that rarity from a public figure; a mea culpa, an acceptance the European Union had got it wrong, specifically on the rollout of LTE.

Apple's Watch struggled to make itself heard amid last week's annual product showcase, with the wearable jockeying for position against two new iPhones, and guest appearances from Mario and Pokemon.

The battle for 5G has taken another twist with Ericsson vowing to deliver the first networks next year, albeit with several caveats.

TIM will deploy virtual RAN (vRAN) in Italy this year, following the July launch of “intelligent” cloud RAN based on virtualised hardware in Palermo.

Vodafone is planning to launch its first NB-IoT networks in Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands and Turkey, as the operator vowed the tech's late entry would not damage its prospects.

The UK telecoms industry can weather the storm of the country's decision to leave the European Union, an EE network executive has claimed.

Decisions on which frequencies 5G will operate on need to be made imminently if networks are to be deployed at scale by 2020, a senior Qualcomm executive has claimed.

The telco industry is facing an aggressive deadline for 5G, which is creating a balancing act of priorities for operators, an Ericsson executive has claimed.

LTE will continue to be worked on until towards 2030, in spite of the industry's evolution into 5G, a senior Deutsche Telekom exexcutive has claimed.

Spectrum was in the spotlight at the 5G World event this week, with questions raised about whether the current methods of allocation were fit for purpose.

The world of crowdsourcing has been a fixture of the technology world for some time now but TIM has argued that 5G will see a network built according to the demands of its customers, rather than vendors.