No sooner than 3GPP had announced the completion of its Release 15 standards for 5G, than some operators and vendors were starting to look ahead to Release 16, which should be finalized in late 2019. This is not only a marketing ploy – it reflects the fact that, as in previous mobile generations, the first release does not address all the operators’ requirements. Indeed, many of the most potentially powerful weapons that 5G will put in the hands of service providers, such as dynamic spectrum support, dense device-to-device communications, and extreme reliability, will have to wait for Release 16 or even beyond. This does not take away from the achievement of getting Release 15 largely completed on time. Of course,…