As early 5G deployments get underway, leading CSPs are issuing an urgent call to the industry to collaborate to deliver robust automation for 5G. This call comes on the back of years of virtualization hype that has yet to fully live up to expectations and ongoing fragmentation in open source automation platform adoption. It’s a moment of truth for the industry that has led to questions of whether automation efforts will be mature enough to enable dynamic 5G networks to live up to their promise. The good news is that pragmatic approaches to getting started with automation are gaining traction and specific use cases such as network slice activation offer low-hanging fruit for CSPs – and the industry – to achieve early automation wins.