them with insufficient profit to invest in new technology. Further, the panels that the European Commission has assembled to provide expertise on 5G tend to be very heavily composed of the current key players. Outlandish Claims As part of the escalating rhetoric, companies and countries have competed to be the first to deploy 5G. Hence, there have been claims such as the 2018 deployment at the Winter Olympics (discussed above). It seems unlikely that the standard will be completed before 2018 and that the equipment will be available by 2019. In practice, the standard decade-long cycle suggests that first equipment availability is more likely to be 2020, with significant rollout by 2022. This aligns with the thoughts of the GSMA reported in Chapter 5. For some elements, such as mmWave, some commentators believe that there is so much research to do that 2025 is a more realistic date for implementation. Yet many appear to believe, because a major company has announced that it will deploy 5G in 2018, that therefore this must happen. Somehow the cycles of the industry will be speeded up. This has never happened and is unlikely to happen with a standard as uncertain as 5G. Standards take time to develop, and efforts to put pressure on standards bodies tend to backfire as key players stop collaborating and conflicts slow progress. The only way a system can be deployed in 2018 is if it is nonstandard, based on developments within the R&D centerof the associated companies. Such an outcome would be harmful to the industry, resulting in nonstandard equipment appearing in different parts of the world; confusing the ecosystem as to what “real” 5G is; and fragmenting the economies of scale. It might result in various players claiming that whatever they deployed in 2018 was 5G. Such outlandish claims risk making the situation worse by confusing and fragmenting the market. The Major Players Cannot Be Wrong The manufacturers and operators are powerful companies. Collectively, they employ millions and account for about $960 billion of annual revenue—about 1.5 percent of the world’s GDP. Many believe that if such large companies state they are going to pursue a particular vision or objective, then it is certain to occur. History suggests otherwise. MNOs have in the past declared strong support for: — Video calling — Picture messaging — Location-based services — Femtocells — Internet/walled gardens/wireless application protocol — Widgets/own-brand app stores — eHealth — Mobile payment None of these came to be provided by the MNO. Video calling was delivered over the top (OTT) by Skype. Picture messaging