LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS AMERICAS 2017: 5G is not just another iteration of mobile innovation but has the potential to join “a very exclusive club” of technologies that have transformed all industries through the course of history, said Ronan Dunne, EVP and group president of Verizon Wireless.

5G is right up there with technologies like the printing press, the steam engine and electricity and can enable sustained global economic growth if all stakeholders work together to help realise its true potential, Dunne said in this morning’s opening keynote.

Verizon estimates that by 2035, 5G will enable more than $12 trillion worth of global economic growth and support 22 million jobs worldwide.

In order to achieve this, the mobile industry “has a lot of heavy lifting to do”.

Dunne said that a few years ago, BBC’s head of digital strategy told him that the first ten years of the television industry were like “radio in front of a camera, effectively a fixed point camera, filming a traditional radio broadcast”.

Eventually, though, the industry figured out how to reinvent content based on the unique properties of the medium they were dealing with.

Similarly, he said creators and innovators in the mobile space have not yet wrapped their minds around the full creative potential of 5G, focusing on “recording the status quo rather than imagining a fundamentally different future”.

Currently, he said wireless is seen as an opportunity to have ubiquitous connectivity, and digital as a way to automate and optimise certain processes. However, it can do a whole lot more, it can make the future look as different as “Game of Thrones is from I Love Lucy”.

“Artificial intelligence, connected cars, robotics and bio tech will bring a fresh wave of innovation, enabled by low latency, stupendous speeds and continuous connectivity,” he said.

For one, 5G will enable IoT to be delivered on a massive scale, which will lead to “the industrial internet” that will penetrate all industries.