Last week saw the finalization of 3GPP’s next wave of 5G standards, Release 16. Despite a delay of a few months because of the pandemic crisis, the specifications have now been frozen after a series of online meetings of the 3GPP groups. The standards body also said that the Release 16 ASN.1 and OpenAPI specifications, which usually come later than the core specs, had been frozen on schedule, and at the same time as the main standards. (The 3GPP defines ASN.1 as covering protocols between the network and the user equipment, or between network nodes, while everything else is considered a ‘functional requirement’.) Key elements of Rel16 include many focused on the industrial and IoT applications that are often associated…