In the week of Brexit and Iceland, a London event perhaps did not need any more reminders about falling behind the rest of the world – but a final, unavoidable conclusion from last week’s 5G World was that the east Asian operators, always very technically progressive, are also in a league of their own when it comes to detailed deployment plans too. NTT Docomo, China Mobile, KT and other trailblazers are not just showing off the smartest semi-proprietary technologies – they are close to a commercially viable model for 5G too. But not before they have sufficient 4G scale on which to build the next wave – which in China Mobile’s case is almost mind-boggling. In 2011 the operator hit…