Here’s another batch of news briefs from this week’s Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona. Go here to check out our first roun of briefs. 

-Verizon said it has opened the door to thousands of developers to ThingSpace, its Internet of Things platform. Verizon said more than 4,000 developers are using ThingSpace since its launch in October 2015. Noting its global ambitions, Verizon said its IoT footprint now spans more than 120 countries, and expects to raise that total to nearly 200 by year-end. Verizon also said cloud APIs for ThingSpace will soon be available in beta form

-On the heels of a business and tech partnership forged last year, Ericsson and Cisco said they’ve been selected to transform Vodafone’s Portugal IP mobile backhaul platform. The system will feature Cisco Aggregation Services Router 9000 and Ericsson systems integration and global services.

-Expway, a wireless multicast company, introduced FastLane, a content delivery network solution optimized for mobile networks.FastLane, it said, optimizes the link from the network cell to devices using LTE Broadcast, Multicast Dynamic Switching and pre-emptive caching. At the show, Expway is running demos with Akamai and Huawei. Expway also announced that MediaTek will integrate the Expway middlware on its “helio” smartphone SoC family.

-Ovum issued a forecast that the number of m-commerce users worldwide will grow from 452.78 million in 2014, to 2.07 billion in 2019 amid the surge in adoption of person-to-person mobile transfer and mobile proximity payment technologies and the use of powerful smartphones with larger screens. The firm also expects the global transaction value of m-commerce to grow from $50.92 billion in 2014, to $693.36 billion in 2019.

-Chipmaker Marvell is showing a suite of silicon and software for the Internet of Things, wireless and smart home ecosystems, including demos running on Google Weave and Brillo and advancements in its Kinoma suite of products, modular virtual system on chips, and its Andromeda Box platform, which is made for Brillo.

As Mobile World Congress gets rolling, here’s a snapshot of what’s making news in Barcelona.

-Ericsson launched OTT Cloud Connect (OCC), an “open” cloud service that enables mobile operators to link up with multiple over-the-top players to deliver services. Ericsson said OCC “strives to fill the gap” between operator networks and OTT services by  “exposing” the OSS and BSS capabilities of players on both sides of the equation. Ericsson said Google/YouTube is among the first partners to get on-boarded on the OCC platform.

-Casa Systems, a company known for making cable modem termination systems and converged cable access platforms, is pushing deeper into wireless with the launch of the Axyom “virtualized” edge platform and Apex, a multi-standard, low-power small cell solution.  Casa said Axyom a virtualized multi-access solution for 3G/4G and trusted/untrusted WiFi access.

-Cisco Systems said it will work with  Ericsson and Intel to develop and trial what’s it’s billing as the industry’s first 5G router, claiming it will achieve faster speeds, lower latency and be able to handle “exponentially more Internet-connected devices.” As members of the Verizon 5G Technology Forum, Cisco, Ericsson and Intel are partnering with the carrier on an ecosystem aimed at accelerating the pace of 5G innovations.

-Ericsson said a 5G trial held with Verizon of new radio prototypes earlier this month achieved multi-gigabit speeds. The field trials of those prototypes used a mix of advanced beam forming, beam tracking,  new antenna designs (128 antenna elements and 64 radio chains in each prototype), and Multi-User MIMO technologies to enable speeds of more than 10 Gbps, the vendor said. 5G signals an evolution of today’s LTE technology, plus new radio access technologies that are often operating in higher frequency ranges.

-Elsewhere on the 5G front, T-Mobile and Ericsson said they’ll team on field and lab trials in the U.S., expecting them to get underway in the second half of 2016. Ericsson said it has already notched more than 20 memorandums of understanding to test 5G with operators worldwide.

-AT&T said it is growing its Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem by integrating tools and developer solutions with Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft. AT&T said, for example, that its developer tools, including AT&T Flow Designer and AT&T M2X, will now work with Cisco’s Fog agent, Fog apps, and Fog analytics systems, Intel’s IoT Developer Kit, and with Microsoft's cloud, analytics, and visualization tools.

-Adobe has added MPEG-DASH support and dynamic ad insertion to Adobe Primetime, its multiscreen TV platform, noting that the implantation will use the same workflows and business rules used to insert ads into HLS streams. The resulting work will enable streams with stitched ads to reach devices and browsers that support MPEG-DASH, including HTML5-complaint browsers, Adobe said.

AT&T said it will invest nearly $10 billion this year on its integrated solutions for businesses around the world.

But even with that big number factored in, AT&T continues to expect its overall capital investment for 2016 to be about $22 billion.

AT&T’s new, business services-facing, targeted investment plan includes the integration of more than 6,000 kilometers of Mexico fiber currently supporting the wireless operations into the AT&T wireline network. It will also include the expansion of the company’s software platform that lets customers rapidly change or add network services, a broadening of dedicated Internet of Things networks in Europe and the U.S. for things such as connected cars, fleets, and utility meters.

“Business is moving faster than ever and companies around the world need to be agile to quickly adapt to changing markets,” Ralph de la Vega, vice chairman of AT&T and CEO of the company’s Business Solutions & International unit, said in a statement. “Our industry-leading network and innovative platforms give them the tools to do just that — where they want it and how they want it—around the globe.”