Robots, cars and virtual-reality headsets will turn heads at Mobile World Congress later this month, but the real star of these shows will be the still-nascent 5G standard.

Practically every mobile vendor and service provider will have demonstrations — or at least visions — of what they think the next generation of mobile will be able to do. Showing off hoped-for features this year is part of the long run-up to the commercial launch of 5G in 2020, with a few people getting pre-standard forms of the technology just two years from now.

Carriers planning those early deployments, like SK Telecom and NTT DoCoMo, will have a lot to say about them at MWC. Chip makers like Intel and Qualcomm, naturally, will also get in on the game. Network vendor Ericsson has already given glimpses of a 2018 rollout it’s planning with TeliaSonera, and this week, rival Nokia previewed demonstrations it’ll run on the show floor.

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