Never before have events coincided so neatly to demonstrate the gap between mobile operators’ thinking about 5G, and how future networks will really be deployed for disruptive effect. While Europe’s leading MNOs were presenting a backwards-looking ‘5G Manifesto’ to the European Commission, veiling pleas for net neutrality special treatment with promises of 5G build-out, Facebook was announcing an open source approach to the mobile network, OpenCellular – part of a wider trend which could rip apart the network cost base and the operators’ and 3GPP vendors’ cosy world. Various developments last week highlighted how MNOs are stuck in their traditional thought processes, to potentially fatal effect. This is clear in many critical areas – investment/ROI models; pricing of new services;…