We can no longer see 5G as a wireless standard alone. Its heart may still be a 3GPP-defined radio, but to deliver commercial benefits to operators (old or new), wireline links will be as important as wireless ones, and architectural change will be more important than an updated air interface. Several important developments over the past few weeks have originated in the wireline industry. The ITU’s (International Telecommunications Union’s) wireline division has published far-reaching recommendations for data aware networking to support 5G; more operators have joined CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Data center), an open source initiative with wireline roots, which now has a powerful mobile corollary. Activities like CORD will help accelerate uptake of software-defined networking (SDN) in…