One of the driving assumptions behind 5G is that it will be deployed hand-in-hand with the technologies that will result in a highly automated network, such as AI-enabled network analytics and virtualization. The resulting cost savings, and improvements in efficiency and quality of service, should help to justify the heavy expenditure in deploying yet another generation of mobile networks. This justification is much needed, at a time when 4G still has plenty of life in it for most operators and most locations, if all they needed was to add capacity and support ever-higher video resolutions. But they need more than that, notably an entirely new cost base for supporting existing services, and a flexible platform capable of enabling a huge…