The message from Mobile World Congress last month was that 5G development cycles for chipset, terminal and infrastructure firms are accelerating with first network launches perhaps just months away.

According to networks supplier Nokia, commercial 5G roll‑outs may start later this year in the US and China.

South Korea and Japan are not expected to be far behind.

Nokia will supply 5G network infrastructure to T-Mobile for the operator’s planned nationwide 5G multi-band network in the US.

Chinese networks giant Huawei also sees a ramping up of 5G network development globally and it says it is involved in pre-commercial development with 30‑plus network operators.

Despite early 5G trials in the UK and Germany, Europe seems to be a little behind the US and China in the 5G race.

But operators and suppliers believe there is still time to catch up.

According to a report from Rethink Technology Research, fragmented regulation and the need for greater urgency from the main mobile operators mean Europe may be not prepared for important 5G-enabled applications such as the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and smart cities.

“One reason Europe is falling behind,” said Caroline Gabriel, Rethink’s research director, “is that regulations and processes surrounding sites, power levels and equipment approvals have for some time been too rigid, lengthy and fragmented to encourage mass‑scale roll-out.”

The answer could be for regulators to enable more flexible small cell network deployments, then “Europe could catch up quickly in 5G use cases which require dense networks,” she said.

Huawei is active in the UK and has 5G partnerships with BT and mobile operator EE.

The companies are conducting live trials of 5G wireless links using the proposed millimetre wave radio interface standard known as New Radio (NR).

Agreed by the 3GPP standards committee, the NR access standard is seen as an important 5G technical hurdle to be cleared.

Approaches to network slicing are also heading in the right direction.

In the UK, communications infrastructure company Arqiva is working with Samsung on what they claim is the first field trial of 5G fixed wireless access technology in the UK and Europe, and is operating in the 28GHz millimetre wave spectrum.

According to Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO of Arqiva the trial, “though only a proof of concept at this stage, [has] seen a great level of response so far from our entire customer base”.

Inevitably development of 5G mobile devices is a little behind the network plans, but there are also signs that it is accelerating.

Huawei unveiled its first 5G chipsets in Barcelona and is rumoured to have plans to launch a 5G smartphone later this year.

Handset giant Samsung is not expected to be quiet about its 5G plans for much longer.

It has already demonstrated a tablet with 5G transmission capabilities in the US.

Consultant editor Richard Wilson writes a regular column for Electronics Weekly