Verizon, with an assist from América Móvil, KT, Rogers, Telstra, and Vodafone, has established another 5G specifications body. The goal this time around is for the operators to collaborate and “accelerate the delivery of 5G and mobile edge computing” on a global basis.

Associations and standards bodies are common pursuits as new technologies gain momentum, but these groups can also muddy the waters by creating competing approaches that reflexively insulate empowered interests over broader goals that drive genuine interoperability.

The operators claim the 5G Future Forum will collaborate to develop interoperable 5G specifications for developers and enterprises in the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region, and Europe. The group also said it will develop public and private marketplaces to increase developer access to 5G and share best practices in 5G deployments.

Roger Entner, founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics, described this as a positive and widely expected effort. These company-led associations are part of the natural cycle and evolution of a new technology — replicating what’s occurred in previous leaps in wireless network technologies, he explained.

“There is a lot of overlap and everybody wants to have a say,” Entner said in a phone interview. “Over time all these competing associations will become one. … In the beginning there is a proliferation of different standards bodies and then they consolidate over time. That’s how it works.”

The last time Verizon organized a 5G association it led to the creation of a proprietary, pre-standards based technology. That effort allowed the company to claim it was the first operator to launch 5G, a limited fixed wireless offering, but Verizon has effectively abandoned that proprietary technology in favor of standardized 5G equipment.

The website for that group, the 5G Tech Forum, is now defunct.

“[Verizon] didn’t want to wait for anybody and needed something — they wanted to be first,” Entner explained. “It worked very well for them when it was in 4G where they also launched a pre-standard equipment, basically their own standard. So it’s not that new, unique, you name it.”

Forums and associations like this routinely try to fill in the gaps or accelerate adoption of a new technology while it’s still working its way through larger standards bodies like the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and 3GPP. As such, the formation of these groups are largely viewed as an opportunity for operators and vendors to get ahead of the curve.

The latest Verizon 5G forum was announced just days after SK Telecom launched a new organization, the Global MEC Task Force, to share what it has learned in 5G and mobile edge computing across the Asia-Pacific region. MEC is of particular interest in 5G because it can facilitate the delivery of new use cases and revenue streams for operators and vendors. ETSI last year released MEC specifications that deal with architecture, framework, and general principles for service APIs.

Verizon isn’t a newcomer to MEC either. The operator last month announced Verizon Edge, which marries its 5G network with Amazon Web Services’ (AWS’) Wavelength edge compute service. Verizon rival AT&T and AWS rival Microsoft have also partnered on MEC and recently began a limited roll out of network edge compute (NEC) technology that ties together Microsoft’s Azure cloud and AT&T’s network edge locations.

Those specific and more detailed partnerships with hyperscale cloud providers will likely do more to advance MEC and bring it to the market, but operators and vendors appear to be equally interested in pursuing the effort on multiple fronts, including the establishment of sometimes overlapping and competing forums.