It’s all kicking off in China at the moment, with Deutsche Telekom, Intel and Huawei teaming up to do what they claim is the first 5G NR interoperability test on a commercial base station.

No sooner does Qualcomm cozy up to a bunch of Chinese smartphone vendors than Intel moves to steal its thunder. A perennial straggler in the mobile industry Intel has long been telegraphing its intention to make up lost ground in the 5G era. With that in mind it couldn’t have found two stronger allies in Huawei and DT, so that feels like a step in the right direction. What the US government will have to say about it, however, is another matter.

Of course everyone involved used this test as an opportunity to display their 5G credentials. “After delivering leading contributions to the 3GPP’s work on 5G standards, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei and Intel moved swiftly to jointly verify implementation progress through standards-based interoperability testing,” said Arash Ashouriha, SVP of Technology Innovation at Deutsche Telekom. “The success of our test is a significant step on the path to 5G ecosystem maturity and early 5G commercialization.”

“The success of this testing shows that Huawei and all parties have devoted themselves deeply to the new NR standard,” said Yang Chaobin, President of Huawei’s 5G product line. “As the standard continues to be updated, Huawei will continue to work with all parties to step up interoperability test and promote the 5G industry maturity process, and to welcome the arrival of the entire industry digitisation.”

“Intel has been actively working with leading 5G companies to take advantage of Intel’s unique end-to-end 5G NR technology and to accelerate 5G testing and commercialisation based on the latest 5G NR technology,” said Asha Keddy, GM of Next Generation Standards at Intel. “The Intel XMM 8000 modem family maturity and time to launch will significantly benefit from this early multi-vendor interoperability progress and the realisation of a global 5G NR industry ecosystem, with initial launches in mid-2019 and large-scale scaling in 2020.”

We might be seeing the start of some entrenched factionalism ahead of the first commercial green shots of 5G. Intel itself is likely to benefit from the number of companies and regulators Qualcomm has managed to alienate in recent months and Huawei was conspicuously absent from Qualcomm’s recent smartphone vendor announcement. We wouldn’t be surprised to see it go with Intel 5G modems, so long as they’re up to scratch.