If illusion is the first of all pleasures, as Oscar Wilde would have it, the mobile networks industry is a happy place. It clings to its cherished myths – that the next ‘G’ really will arrive when the vendors say it will; that one architecture really will support ultra-broadband and billions of tiny ‘things’ equally well; that the move to software networks will usher in a brave new world of open standards and equal playing fields. The latter is particularly potent at the moment, as operators start to run tests and trials of virtualization and software defined networking (SDN) technologies. The traditional powerhouses, including the big five infrastructure makers, have been active but not dominant – one of the most…