You can’t have missed the launch of 5G. I just won’t believe you if you said otherwise.

I suppose that may be just my view from the technological ivory tower but even in my day to day life I couldn’t help but notice EE and Vodafone filling advertising space for new mobile tariffs as well as Three’s marketing of the 5G home hub it believes is the future.

Away from the consumer world my eyes are scanning the industry for potential use cases. Every factory, a future robot’s playground, every farm, a hub of data and analytics, every city centre, predicting our next move.

It’s funny how almost every industry is aware of it. From the Internet of Things and Edge feature that you’d expect it to feature in, to the disaster recovery piece and interviews with traditional hardware manufacturers, everyone is aware of it.

But I am, as of yet, unsatisfied by progress. Promises, although believable, often do not contain time scales and, as I hark back to my chat with Cormac Whelan of Nokia, it appears that we are still at the testing phase despite numerous hubs and labs being set up by the likes of Huawei, Ericsson and the aforementioned Finnish vendor.

I am optimistic for the next 12 months though. I do not believe that the vast majority of consumers and even businesses will be enticed by 5G tariffs, not least because they have to wait at least 9 months for a 5G iPhone if normal timelines are to be kept.

Therefore, operators need to look at other possible revenue streams. Vodafone have done so with their IoT offering and I expect others to follow suit.

So, here’s to 2020, may we finally start to see some new use cases for mobile technology.