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The goal is to enable faster 5G deployment once 3GPP completes the first release of the official specifications. An official technology standard makes the roll-out experience smoother which will help businesses and consumers get 5G technology even faster.

It could have been Bank of America Corp.

Activist investor ValueAct Capital Management LP took Wall Street by surprise when it disclosed Monday that it had bought a stake inMorgan Stanley, flouting conventional wisdom that activists don’t engage in banking because there are too many regulations to make a big difference in a company’s strategy.

But the Morgan Stanley stake, worth about $1.15 billion Tuesday, prompted a flurry of discussions about who might be next. Some Bank of America investors, frustrated by years of low returns, had reached out to activist investors, ValueAct included, to gauge their interest in getting into BofA, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some of these activists saw Bank of America as a possible investment, one of the people noted, but the bank’s size makes it hard to accumulate a stake big enough to wield any influence.

ValueAct’s 38-million share investment in Morgan Stanley represented a stake of about 2%. Buying a similar proportion of Bank of America shares would cost more than twice as much, about $3 billion, based on Tuesday’s stock price.

Bank of America’s biggest shareholder, index giant Vanguard Group, holds about 6% of the shares, according to FactSet.

On Tuesday afternoon, Bank of America was trading at about 64% of book value, less than Morgan Stanley’s 83%, according to FactSet. (Citigroup Inc. was also trading at about 64%.)

Like Morgan Stanley, Bank of America has also been making changes. CEO and Chairman Brian Moynihan, in his six years at the helm, has significantly slimmed down the company, getting rid of jobs, offices, and entire units. The bank last month announced big new cost-cutting goals, and Mr. Moynihan has acknowledged that shareholders want better returns and that they’re working on it.

The bank has also been trying to strengthen its relationships with top shareholders. The bank this year tweaked its annual letter, adding a message from the board’s lead independent director and more information about the bank’s governance structure and social involvement. Those changes came shortly after BlackRock CEOLaurence Fink – whose company is one of Bank of America’s biggest shareholders – urged U.S. companies to not make themselves targets for “short-termism” – an allusion to activists – and to instead to provide shareholders with more information about their long-term strategy and the involvement of board members.

The bank was caught by surprise when shareholders protested the board’s decision to make Mr. Moynihan the chairman without a shareholder vote in 2014. Shareholders eventually approved the measure, and bank executives have been meeting more regularly with shareholders since then. It also passed the Federal Reserve’s stress test in June and received permission to raise its dividend.

In the world of ultralow rates, investors are being forced to wrestle with some head-scratching conundrums. For instance: how can high-yield corporate bonds simultaneously look historically expensive, yet also attractive?

The paradox is clear in Europe. On an absolute yield-to-worst basis—making the assumption that issuers take advantage of low yields to redeem bonds early, reducing the potential return to investors—euro-denominated junk bonds currently yield just over 3.5%, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes. That is very close to the lowest on record. High-yield bonds aren’t living up to their name.

But the relative-value picture, measured by the yield spread over government bonds, is very different. The spread on the euro high-yield bond index is currently around 4 percentage points. That is far above the low of 1.8 percentage points recorded in 2007 before the financial crisis hit, even though the yield then was north of 6%. Today’s spread looks relatively attractive in a world where income is a scarce commodity. It also gives support to those who think corporate bonds have further to rally.

In Europe, the quality of the high-yield market has actually improved. Before the crisis more than half of the debt issued was from companies rated single-B and lower; now it is double-B-rated companies that make up the lion’s share of the market. The European speculative-grade default rate stood at 2.6% in July, according to Moody’s, well below the global rate of 4.7% and the U.S. rate of 5.5%.

The thing that has really changed in this equation, of course, is underlying rates. In mid-2007, the five-year German government bond yielded around 4.5%; propelled by loose monetary policy, it now yields minus 0.5%.

But even if spreads aren’t too tight, low underlying yields have a way of distorting valuations. First, zero or negative yields are a low bar to beat. Anything with a positive yield begins to look attractive. Even gold has become newly shiny, its lack of cash flows no longer a flaw.

Second, investors are having to take much more risk for reduced total returns. European junk bonds now offer less yield than a triple-A-rated five-year German government bond did before the crisis. While the fall in yields has delivered windfall gains to investors, it has also reduced the prospects for future returns. Absolute yields matter—especially for assets that bear real credit risk, where they help compensate for defaults that will occur.

And third, even though interest rates are expected to remain low, the worrying bit of the equation looks to be the risk-free rate, a key building block for valuations of assets such as corporate bonds and equities. The relative value pyramid is resting on unsound foundations.