The dominant mobile communication technology in the U.S., fourth-generation Long Term Evolution (4G LTE), first appeared in December 2010 when Verizon Communications (VZ) rolled out a commercial network to customers in several dozen cities. Mobile operators and telecommunication equipment companies around the world are hard at work developing the technologies and hardware systems required to bring the fifth-generation (5G) of mobile networking to market.

• The expansion of 5G mobile networks has begun in the U.S., although it might take several years before it's widespread.
• A number of companies are looking to capitalize on the planned expansion.
• The companies best positioned to take advantage of the 5G growth include Ericsson, Nokia, and Qualcomm.

5G promises vast improvements in speed, responsiveness, and scale to support all kinds of bandwidth-hungry applications and technologies. Mobile operators expect to deliver 5G mobile download speeds in the gigabits-per-second range, around 50 times faster than existing 4G LTE technology. Aside from raw speed, perhaps the most transformative feature of 5G technology is its ability to accommodate the tens of billions of connected devices, smart objects, and embedded sensors expected to come online in the coming years as the internet of things (IoT) becomes a reality.