5G: Mobile industry tries to convince the world about the data future

The future is fast, according to the experts. But it feels like it is arriving a little slowly. Phone and network experts have spent the week trying to make the world excited about 5G and the possibilities it offers for data connections – though when the promised 10 times faster speed will arrive, and how, is a little more complicated than they would like to make it sound. The Mobile World Congress is the annual event where the phone and carrier industry gather together in a huge Barcelona conference centre and talk about the future. And everything they had to say about that future sounded mostly the same: 5G, the new data connections that are about to disrupt just about every industry, according to its proponents.