While U.S. wireless carriers battle each other by pushing unlimited data plans riding on their vaunted 4G networks, an annual industry gathering in Barcelona next week will be looking to the future.

The more than 100,000 attendees won’t be able to walk very far without seeing or hearing about 5G, the next generation of wireless technology that is still years away, with uses not yet entirely understood.

Missing from the show is Apple Inc.—a perennial no-show—but also absent is any significant new device launch, in contrast to the past three years when Samsung Electronics Inc. used the event to introduce the latest iteration of its flagship Galaxy smartphone. Reeling from a high-profile recall last year, Samsung is planning to unveil its next flagship smartphone in late March.

In recent years, Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has addressed the crowd at Mobile World Congress, often playing down tension between giant internet companies and the telecom operators. This year, the highest-profile keynote speaker from Silicon Valley is Netflix Inc.’s CEO Reed Hastings, an advocate of “net neutrality” regulations at a time when the majority of mobile data traffic is video. Such regulations require broadband providers to treat all internet traffic equally; the Donald Trump administration’s new point man for telecommunications regulation, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, is a critic of the rules.

While carriers tout that 5G tests are producing blazing speeds— AT&T Inc. has projected speeds of 10 to 100 times faster than typical 4G connections—the first standards for the platforms won’t likely be set until next year.