Author: Bill Best

Is there such a thing as a totally new idea, or is everything a “better” way of doing what you already do?

When you strip it back to basics, technology gives us a faster, better quality, more fun way of doing something that we already do. Take flying for example, people always travelled and taking a plane enables them to their destination faster.

I was musing on this hypothesis during a Mobile Data Association / ICT KTN event and a number of salient points came up:

A recent survey by Deloitte asked UK users “What is the killer app for 4G?” They all said that it would improve what they already do – with watching video ranking as the obvious highest answer.

We should not be technology-led, but user-led – right? The user need must come before the technology solution… I suggest not always – if you put the technology out there, without being too prescriptive, people will show you what they use it for. That is being user-led too.

SMS – perfect case in point; Twitter, created as an internal tool is now used for all sorts of things: a better way for celebs to create relationships with their fans; a faster and personalised news channel; a fast and cheap way to market an event … the list goes on.

And now, the buzz is wearable technology. Technologists will tell you that microprocessors have been embedded in rings for decades. So they cry – “Google glass – what are the user cases?” Why do I want to see augmented reality as I am walking down the road? How will it make my life better?

And what about smart watches? As one of the speakers from Quocirca pointed out, it can’t just be a smaller screen version of what I already have… so let’s think about the practicalities of screen size – and of being able to get information by looking at your wrist rather than getting your phone out. So it smacks of convenience and I for one, do not use my phone on the street any more, since my brand new Samsung was taken out of my hand. So will it be good for notifications? Reminders? Delays on your train / next train leaving in 5 mins? A new Email from someone important? Is a watch face big enough to see photographs? Weather warnings – expect a downpour in 5 minutes, special offers from retail you are walking past, oh and games of course…well we had those in the 1980s….

Martin Garner of CCS Insight gave us a great statement based on their Mobile Internet User Report research they carried out “People grow in to their smartphones” – so they have shown that before buying a smartphone people don’t have a full idea of what they’ll do with it– within the first 18 months, their usage grows as they discover more they can do with it. Exactly my point.

Most of us now have an “orgy” of devices (one of the speaker’s terms, not mine!) and we were given some great insight around how people are using multiple devices. Two terms were offered to describe user behaviour on multiple devices:
1. “Multi-tasking” – we are doing different things on different devices at the same time.
2. “Media-meshing” – where there is real time link between the different things that you are doing – they are related activities.

With multiple connected devices, behaviour is changing and expectations are rising; in the morning, the mobile phone is predominant as people travel to work; during the day it is the laptop and at evening, the tablet.

So here it is – technology advances – we have multiple devices and our behaviour is changing – so what opportunities are created by this? People are showing us what they are doing with new technology…so we backtrack and now can work out ways to proliferate …

Another great concept was introduced, this time by CSS Insight: “Appification” early indications that users are now expecting an App to be supplied with a purchase. It is now assumed that most people have a smartphone and digital natives that have grown up with a smartphone are now moving in to senior jobs – so their first thought will be to create an app for a loyalty scheme, expenses systems and so on – it is a natural way for them to think. So we are hitting a tipping point? Will we have an App for everything? There was also the suggestion that users are starting to expect when they buy things that they come with an app.

So here’s where I end up: People are showing us how they are using technology. We have to put it out there in order to see what people will do with it. The trick is in getting close enough to users to identify changes in behaviour that give us, as innovators, the clues on what we should do next.

Apps World London October 22nd & 23rd

As someone who has been attending Mobile World Congress – and all its previous incarnations – for more years than I care to remember, I approached Apps World 2013 with a certain feeling of aloof distain. After all, the event this year was at Earls Court smaller venue – hall 2, less room than just one of the vast halls devoted to Apps at MWC this year. I also regard MWC as my annual ‘bump’ where I encounter old friends and colleagues and we talk about the good old days. I knew the chances of me bumping into anyone I knew here was pretty slim (and anyway can you recognise anyone under their hood?).

Yes, Apps developers and the App world can seem like foreign territory for long standing CTOs such as me who got dizzy spending billions of pounds on real network infrastructure that you could see and touch and stand and back and admire. An App can be knocked up and brought to market in a week. That’s why there are millions of them out there and probably why so few make any money. I’m told that the App market globally could be worth £75Bn this year, although no one is really sure how to measure the value. A lot of money for sure but compared against the £1 trillion of mobile revenues it’s still small fry.

MNOs wouldn’t get out of bed for the money that an App makes – and they don’t! And therein lies the dilemma for MNOs. Apps are happening all around them and are now encircling them and even forcing a radical rethink of the long standing business model the mobile operators have followed since their inception. They would like to follow the money but can’t.

Not too long ago people would not have known what an OS was let alone name the OS they are using and today they even know the version number of Android or IOs they are using. There are other OS of course but let’s not waste time on them today. Quite simply Apps have changed the way customers use their mobile, the way they think about their mobile, the way they select the device they want to use and even the operating system on the device.

I hadn’t spent long in the hall before I realised that no matter how vast MWC is and how many people attend it each year, the sea change is happening fast and the mobile economy is now all about Apps and what the customer wants to do on their mobile device. One could say it’s been a long time coming! Applications are all that matter to customers and their device must support the Apps they want to use and their network must allow them affordable access to the Apps they like using. The relevance of the network is moving in the wrong direction as far as operators are concerned and that must be keeping a lot of MNO CEOs awake at night. Anyone in any doubt as to this only had to turn up to this show.

Attending this event taught me that Corporate Apps are beginning to dominate the landscape now. I’m not sure that is altogether a good thing but I suppose it was inevitable. So there were no end of trendy brands telling us how cool and hip their App is – or will be. There are still a lot of barriers to overcome before corporate Apps really take off. Setting aside user adoption for a second, the purpose of a corporate App doesn’t always seem to have been thought through beyond an intern in the marketing dept. saying ‘we must have an App’. So they have one – but what’s it’s for? Is it intended to be an extension of advertising, a new channel, a customer care platform, a promotions vehicle? Should it have a fulfilment purpose? Is it essential to have a payment engine? I think the corporate world needs to do a bit more thinking about Apps before diving in. Security raises its head time and time again and is a worry for the corporates. Especially in the area of BYOD and an expectation that user Apps and Devices need to be integrated into the back-office IT systems somehow. One feels there is a disaster just waiting to happen here.

All of us who attended Apps World 2013 have seen the future. OK you could say the future has been here for a while now but it’s not until the future goes mainstream that one can say it’s properly arrived. There is a long way to go yet in industrialising Apps across the board and we are bound to see a process whereby the survival of the fittest Apps means more focus on the quality of an App and less so on the sheer number out there. Apps that simply launch web sites have no future and Apps that serve a useful purpose and that customers want to use will rise to the top.

The Mobile Academy, hosted by UCL and Mobile Monday London, moved their usual session to tag onto the show and provided two very useful insights that may have been telling us much about the future of Apps:

Bruce Lawson from Opera spoke entertainingly about HTML5. What the dickens has HTML5 got to do with Apps you may well ask! Who knows, there may well be another twist in the Apps story yet! (The organisers told me they were being deliberately controversial.)

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Then Tim Green from Mobile Money Revolution reminded us just how tortuous the mobile payment landscape is and anyone who thinks a great App is easily monetised would probably have gone home and kicked the cat.

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I came away thinking that although Apps will dominate the mobile economy for many years to come, picking winners and losers is not so easy and as the population grows on the Planet of the Apps, I wonder just how much money there will be to sustain the growing masses.

Credit to Six Degrees for putting on a good show – a real coup in getting Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to come along and the line-up of speakers was impressive.

After a two year absence, CTIA returned to Las Vegas – to the Sands Exhibition centre, a much smaller venue. In a way Vegas seems the ideal location for a wireless industry convention these days – should an MNO gamble on LTE, IMS and RCS or stick. I discovered (purely by being an observer at the gambling tables of course!) that sticking is just not a winning option.

I would have to say up front that the calibre of exhibitors this year was very disappointing. If CTIA sees its main competition as Mobile World Congress, then it is losing out badly in comparison. I couldn’t get round all the halls and see all the exhibitors at MWC this year – at CTIA I did the hall in half a day. Perhaps the calendar scheduling doesn’t help. It is too close to CES and MWC so it’s no surprise to see it shift to September for next year and combine with MobileCon (the mobile IT facing event). CTIA say it will create a ‘super’ wireless industry show. I won’t be holding my breath. CTIA still thinks the wireless industry in confined within the US borders. It lacks an international vision, agenda and speaker line up.

Maybe this was evident when one takes a look at who is here – and more crucially, who was not. None of the Tier 1s were to be seen in a way that would persuade the visitor that they were talking this convention seriously. None! The mobile ‘newbies’ like Google, IBM, HP, Oracle, MS, et al, all of whom had noticeable presence at MWC earlier in the year, were also absent here. Handset vendors? HTC yes (a sign of desperation maybe?) but Samsung, LG, Apple, Sony, RIM, Motorola, forget it. Dip into Tier 2 vendors; Acision, Mavinir, Comverse, Amdocs, and again no one anywhere to be seen.
The show seems to have adopted a policy of running a number of partner events specialising in a number of niches such as Co Location, small cell summit, M2M and the world of tablets. Perhaps this is how CTIA sees its future but for me it relegates into the minor league of conferences.

The exhibition hall was about the size of one of the new large halls at the new MWC venue and that’s it. It takes about one hour to walk it all. Compare that with MWCs 8 monster halls over 1.2km and you begin to get an idea on the difference in scale now between the two events. So who was exhibiting in the hall? There was a large retail area with vendors selling accessories such as cases, headsets, chargers etc. There were a lot of component suppliers but I can’t quite see what they achieve from being at the show and a lot of second SIM offerings and device distributors.

So in terms of the exhibition, nothing worthwhile at all. The keynote speaker line up is also pretty much second division stuff. So is it all worthwhile? Well, not if one hasn’t arranged a lot of meetings and the real value for the likes of Azenby is in who we can we meet there that it would be hard to get to at any other time or location.

There wasn’t too much in the way of notable announcements at the show. I think CES and MWC steal the lion’s share of major announcements and most of the device manufacturers now put on their own shoes for product launches.

Qualcomm said that mobile networks will need to carry 1,000 times more data in less than 10 years’ time and that only wide deployment of small cells could support this. (Might also need some more spectrum I think!) There will be 25 billion wireless connected devices and we will need eMBMS to offload data (where it gets off loaded to, they didn’t say).

Lots of talk amongst MNOs and carriers about the fight back against OTT ‘parasites’ (just as there was at MWC) but not much substance behind all the ranting. Some said MNOs will always be in the value chain because they issue phone numbers – but don’t bank on that being the case forever (I say) – others said we ‘control’ the device market (by that I think they mean that they subsidise it (hardly sustainable!) – and others said we can develop our own, better, OTT Apps. I think it is becoming harder to find an MNO with a grasp of the impending market changes and a coherent forward strategy.
Interestingly OTT players seemed more consolatory towards MNOs. Typical of this was Harri Koponen COO at Rovio who said ‘we see operators as friends and partners. Of course ‘Arri is ex CEO of Telia Sonera so perhaps is not totally representative of the wider OTT market but there was a wider held view that OTT players need to avoid outright hostility from MNOs.

This show is not jammed full of major announcements or much else in the way of breaking news. As I mentioned the exhibition was poor form a new technology perspective. So what’s the value in this show? It seems to me that it is not unlike MWC. It’s all about the networking and the meetings. There were a lot of companies here with private meeting rooms only who didn’t even bother with putting up a stand. A growing trend I feel.

So, can CTIA re-invent itself? After 28 years it has lost its way for sure. I am sure that it still grasps mobile in an international industry and there is more to life than lobbying the FCC on behalf of US carriers. Touch and go whether we return to CTIA next year but it is going to take something special to make us want to return.

Our Charles Brookson, with his 26 years of experience as Head of GSMA Security Group was invited to take part in a panel discussion at Mobile Monday London, which I help to organise.   The topic was “BYOD: A Faustian Pact?” and it was chaired by David Rogers, of Copper Horse (a good friend of Azenby’s).

Joining Charles on the panel were experts from Telefonica, Blackberry and Mubaloo and between them they represented a wide range of views on BYOD, around security, standardisation, usability and functionality.

Charles’ position is clear – “it certainly is a pact with the devil: for all the opportunities of bringing your new, shiny devices come a lot of security risks.”  However, the positive side is also clear (in an ideal world) with cost advantages through increased productivity, flexibility and convenience for staff.

Perhaps the best thing to do is accept that it is happening and try to bring in policies that protect the organisation through employee education – but there are lots of areas that need thinking through:

* How, as an organisation can you make sure that confidential data is not compromised?
* What about the dangers that Bluetooth, the camera and tethering bring?
* Are company policies effective? (think about prohibiting special websites vs configuring firewalls instead)
* The whole basis of the working day is being challenged…is it better to allow employees to work when, where and how the tasks require or switch off the email servers at the end of every working day? What about work/life balance?
* Do people really know the impacts of having certain settings on or off and what the consequences are?  Thus the options of dual SIM, embedded SIM and Soft-Sim solutions are raised – with switchable profiles…

To hear a full recording of what happened, you can listen here at The Fonecast, courtesy of Mark Bridge.

Charles showed me a demo yesterday, where he hovered an NFC device near to his smartphone, which pushed his browser to a webpage – that is how easy it is – imagine that this was a poisoned webpage.  Some of the group gasped when they realised that this could happen to them if they had the setting switched on.  More gasps when he told the audience that Angry Birds on Android reads the last number you have dialled – the information is going to them.  How many people have bluetooth on?  As shown by some of the audience responses – Charles points out that most people are not aware of these sorts of security risks. Are you?

This year Mobile World Congress saw the 18th running of the Global Mobile Awards. These are the mobile industries very own ‘Oscars’ or we like to think of them as that. Are they the premier mobile industry awards? There are some impressive stats to back up this claim. 37 categories, 600 entries, 150 independent judges, global spread and coveted prize. The prize is indeed coveted. How do I know this? I see – and sometimes hear – the disappointment from those that don’t win! Oh yes, people care about these awards!

Before I go on, you can see my interview all about the awards with Mobile World Live TV here. I had over 100 texts when this went out from people that saw me on the big screens!

It has been my honour and privilege to act as Chair of the judging panel for the last six years. During this time we have evolved the awards to reflect the vast and ever-spreading nature of the mobile industry. This means adding new categories – dropping some along the way – and of course finding new judges. I cannot claim to do this all on my own. The GSMA and their agencies have an impressive team working on the awards for the previous six months to deliver the highly polished programme we saw again this year. But the GSMA is very keen to ensure that these awards are independent of the GSMA itself. Therefore is does not involve itself in the judging or the selection of judges. This insures the independence of the awards and one of my jobs as Chairman of the Judges is to make sure that the awards are conducting with the highest integrity and remain fully independent of any outside influence. The winners are picked by the judges and the judges alone.

Another thing that has happened over the last few years is that the awards ceremony itself has moved from a black tie evening event to a more open house ceremony now held as part of MWC in the main auditorium. I have mixed thoughts on this. On the one hand it is now accessible to far more people but on the other hand the celebration party is very different now!

I mentioned our 150 judges before and let me say a few more words about them. They come from all over the world, from many different industries, from varying backgrounds and they all give up their time to read and study every entry before awarding marks and selecting the winners. I think we can safely say that this is a very impressive selection of judges. One of the great pleasures of chairing the judging panel is having the opportunity to meet so many knowledgeable people.

The awards ceremony itself is always hosted by an international celebrity. This year it was David Walliams, last year Tim Minchin and previously we have been equally richly entertained by Jonathon Ross, Stephen Fry, Michael McIntyre and Clive Anderson to name but a few. Hey, this job has to have some perks!

The programme this year was the fullest it has ever been. The Connected Life category brought in many new industry sectors such as Health, Education, Automotive as well as established previous categories such as mobile finance and mobile money. We tried to have a ‘where does it all come together category’ we called Smart Cities. Other recent innovations has been the Best Mobile Device Launched at Mobile world Congress where our judges do some real time judging to hunt down the best new device unveiled at the show.

We have also created a very prestigious CTO panel of judges and this year we asked them to pick the overall best technology in the awards programme. Amongst our star studied CTO line up is Hugh Bradlow from Telstra – Hugh and I had the privilege of presenting the award this year to Samsung.

If you want see a full list of the winners and find out more about the Global Mobile Awards programme, go take a look at globalmobileawards.com. I hope this has sparked your interest in the awards and why not find a category that suits your business and make an entry next year. You never know we might just be meeting on stage next year!

I wonder how the new venue will work out?
This year we switch to a new venue in a remote and distant part of Barcelona not connected to the Metro. Not sure who had that idea but I bet he or she travels everywhere by taxi! I, like a lot of people, will be looking to see what Barcelona has done to earn its Mobile World Capital title. We haven’t seen too much evidence to date but it is still early days in the programme. Most people I talk to liked the old Fira once we got used to it. It does have a certain charm and lots of lovely and useful outdoor space to meet and chat with people and to just sit and think and have a quiet moment now and again. The palace on the hill and the fountain and the views across the city will all be missed as we stare at four square walls and compensate ourselves with the fact that we have more space for even more visitors! I’ll go with an open mind though and give it my best shot.

I look forward to being able to talk about the Global Mobile Awards Winners
I will have the pleasure of attending the Global Mobile Awards ceremony, now in their 18th year. I think we can safely say that they are the most prestigious and influential awards in our industry. As honorary Chair of the judging panel it has been my pleasure to oversee the judging process. Given that there are 37 categories this year and well over 150 judges in all, it has been quite a task. Loved every minute though!

Why Chief Technology Officers should come out of hiding!
During my time as a CTO I think I visited the show only once. Some of my team attended but overall probably only about five people from the whole company used to attend the show. I still find today attendance by CTOs to be patchy and most that I meet are there because they are speaking or are on a panel session. I find it interesting to analyse why this should be given that this is a technology show, nearly all the world’s main vendors and manufacturers are there and often announcing new products, and all that is new and bright in our industry is in one place for one week. Maybe it’s because the CTO is a ‘hunted’ animal at these types of show. I remember being stalked by no end of suppliers thrusting their business cards in my direction. I enjoy my current anonymity!
I think another reason is that a CTO can get any vendor to visit them at any time and would expect to be kept up to date on product road maps without having to go to trade show. All of this is true but the CTO does miss out by not coming to MWC. True the CTO can pick up the phone and any supplier will come running but it is what and who the CTO doesn’t know that he is missing out on and MWC is that once-a-year chance to go and discover it – perhaps from a vendor that would never ordinarily get to meet despite having called his or her PA 20 times.

What I am looking forward to
So I think I am all ready to go. Have worked out what I want to focus on – small cells and RAN sharing – have set up a lot of meets already and looking forward to the annual ‘bump’ – those people we only ever seem to bump into at MWC.

I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds. And as long as the Governor of the Bank of England has signed it, it is deemed legal tender. On this basis when I hand you a five pound note you accept at face value that I have handed over money and not just crumpled piece of paper. In the US, they say This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.

Interestingly, the Euro note makes no such assurance or promise and perhaps with what’s going on in the Eurozone, that’s no bad thing! Well, our promise to pay the bearer is about to be condemned to history. The mobile revolution is coming and pretty soon we’ll just wave our mobile phone in the air and its job done. At least that’s the message coming out of the Mobile Money Summit in Milan this month.

If anyone was in any doubt about this they could pick up a free mobile phone at the summit (on loan of course) and use it to buy their tickets on the tram, get around town, and even buy goods in the shops – and hey, it all worked. Pretty impressive. A quick spin round the summit convinced me that the technology works just fine so why is Mobile Money taking so long to come to reality? Perhaps I should clarify that and say why is it taking so long in the developed markets for mobile money to become a reality, as emerging and developing markets are streets ahead.

From MPESA onwards mobile operators have been the pioneers of bringing money services to the un-banked. In fact I am pretty proud of the way the mobile operators have gone where the banks have feared to tread and provided life changing services to whole communities. Make no mistake, mobile money has changed the lives and prospects of millions of people around the world. Where banks and other financial institutions saw credit risks and bad debt, mobile operators have seen customers in need of help and have delivered beyond expectations.

More evidence of emerging markets leading the way came from mBank, a joint venture which launched nationally in the Philippines three weeks ago, between Smart and PlaNet, and claims to be the first microfinance bank to be fully based on mobile technology.

In the developed world where the vast majority have the ‘privilege’ of being banked, we are perhaps more interested in Near Field Communication (NFC) which made up the other half of this summit. Thanks to a good demo from Telecom Italia, I could use my mobile phone to open my Alfa Romeo (well, not mine but I can dream) start the engine and drive away. I like this – you know the damage that car keys can do to your pockets. I can even give permission for my son or daughter to drive the car but that’s a feature too far for me!

This was a theme expanded by the CEO of mobile money technology provider, Oberthur Technologies, Xavier Drilhon. During a good presentation he said mobile money is not the ‘killer app’ but it is probably the first app. It’s the driver and first step many of us will take before embracing the full range of future NFC services such as transport, event ticketing, and access control and loyalty schemes. I think he’s right. But why isn’t it happening all around us today? Of course it takes the building of complete eco systems across multiple industries to join up all the necessary dots and summits like this help push us a little nearer to making this happen.

Another barrier is perceived to be the security and integrity of mobile money services. This seems a bit strange to me given the inherent underlying security measures being used in mobile networks and mobile money services and when I think of the (relatively) pathetic measures involved in PC on-line banking I can’t help but to raise a smile. A very good gathering of regulators were in attendance here to find out a lot more about mobile money services and not just the security aspects. The GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked program was active behind the scenes mobilising all the movers and shakers to promote new services.

The focus of the Summit was very much around mobile services – Google and their wallet along with Apple and their Passport were not in attendance – but who cares? Their own view of a mobile money is much more self-serving and working with partners is hardly their modus operandi. So safe to say they weren’t missed in the slightest.

Is there still a lot to be done? Yes, for sure. We won’t be using our mobile phone for everything and anything just yet but it is coming together – slowly. Recognised at this Summit was the need for a greater emphasis on NFC open specifications and the need to convince merchants of the benefits to them. The GSMA is certainly doing its bit to facilitate progress but fragmentation remains the big danger.

Let’s finish on a positive note though, because this was an upbeat summit. Philippe Vallée, from Gemalto, told us that the mobile NFC market is gaining traction in several countries around the world. Vallée said there is now a growing list of countries adopting NFC technology in a big way, with Singapore, the US, Canada, UK and Italy following in the footsteps of France, Japan and South Korea. “This is moving very fast,” he said.

Good, we are all waiting!

I only bought an exhibition pass so I didn’t attend any of the keynotes. But to be truthful I didn’t have much time to sit through them and one hardly ever learns anything new or interesting from them so I saved myself the extra bucks on registration fees by sticking to Show Floor category. I have to say the keynote speakers were hardly big hitters anyway. Pretty tame stuff really but they did finish off with William J Clinton who did draw a crowd. Someone said to me in the Starbucks queue ‘howdy, you look like the man himself’. He was referring to the other Bill (I think) but I pointed out that ‘I doubted he would be 15 deep in the coffee queue somehow.’ ‘He’s a man of the people’ my new friend said. Perhaps I thought ‘but I’m sure somebody would be getting his skinny latte for him.  Separated at Birth?

Anyway, I missed ‘cousin’ Bill’s keynote speech which is a stain on my copybook. Other than how to run an intern programme I’m not sure what I would have learned from Bill anyway. He spoke about the need for a light hand – in regulation I think!

So on day one I am up at 4:00am. Usual jet lag stuff. So I do a bit of work and then take shower, have an early breakfast and get myself over to the convention centre by 7.30am when the doors open and registration begins. Knowing what the queues are like at MWC on day one, I didn’t want to be at the back of the mad crush. By 7.31 I’m registered.

The first keynote, which I’m not attending, is at 9:00am and my plan is to walk the exhibition floors until 11 o’clock when I have my first meeting of the day scheduled. So with time to kill I head off to the Starbucks for breakfast number two – but I am on extra skinny lattes, so it doesn’t count. Anyway, the free WiFi is at Starbucks so it’s a good place to kill time. I discover later that the exhibition floor also shuts at 5:00pm. 11 till 5! What sort of opening hours are they? Definitely one up to MWC here.

There is a huge retail section in the conference (unlike MWC) and I discover that there are thousands and thousands of different mobile cases one can buy. Leading edge stuff this.

The rest of the floor is the usual exhibition mixture of old and new. I’m always intrigued by who is not exhibiting. I think this always tells one a lot about the show. So no Alcatel Lucent and no Nokia Siemens Networks. Now NSN I can sort of understand but ALU? In the USA? Blimey we’re even in French New Orleans so you’d have thought even the Alcatel branch would be OK to come here. So Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE dominated the infrastructure space. Apple of course are not here but as at MWC they still managed to cast a long shadow over the event.

No naughty CBOSS here but no shortage of short skirts and white teeth. I got though a lot of business cards but never did win the promised iPad. Sure has increased my spam count though.

It struck me walking around the hall that for the vast majority of exhibitors, I wouldn’t have a clue what they did from just looking at their stand and reading all their banners. We do work in a strange industry.

The main themes of the show were much as one would expect in the main. LTE, data off-load, small cells, IP traffic management, LTE WiFi combo plays, lots of devices – but nothing new, mobile money was big as was NFC and they go together now. Can we have some more spectrum please was another common rallying call. Oh, and M2M is the next big thing – so it’s official – as an industry, we’ve run out of ideas.

Congratulations to LG and the marvellous flash dance by all the staff on the stand.

What else (apart from short skits sells?). Well, HTC were blowing bubbles (doesn’t that song contain the line “and like my dreams they fade and die”).

So my final thoughts on CTIA 2012. A well organised and presented show. For the astute visitor there is more to be leant on the exhibition floor than in the keynotes. The wireless industry, from a carrier’s perspective, is undergoing fundamental change. The role of the carrier, the importance of the network and customer ownership changes are big issues the mobile operators need to grapple with but somehow not addressed at this show. This may well be because the answers are never going to come from a trade show. That doesn’t detract from the value of a trade show such as this which is more geared towards the technologies that serve our industry rather than strategies.

CTIA WIRELESS 2012 has returned to New Orleans after a 7 year absence. It has also time shifted itself into May for the first time. This is seen as CTIA trying to create a bigger gap between the two shows preceding it in the calendar, CES in January and MWC in February. I’m sure CTIA hoped this increased gap might have resulted in more manufacturers making major product announcements and launching new devices at the show. Sadly that hasn’t happened and Samsung even scheduled its own Galaxy III event in London the week before the start of CTIA.

Still, the return to New Orleans was well received and without fail everyone I spoke to about it at the event approved of the decision. New Orleans certainly has earned a break or two and I have to say the city did a great job in hosting the event and all the visitors. There was no hiking of hotel room rates and restaurant menus as happened in Cannes and sadly is now becoming a feature of Barcelona when MWC hits town. The good thing about New Orleans is that it can take 40,000 visitors in its stride as tourism is its largest industry.

Robert Mesirow, CTIA vice president and show director, said that after the last show held there in 2005 that the event had out-grown New Orleans, which seemed a bit hard to reconcile, but said CTIA came back this year because New Orleans has since ‘grown.’ I discovered the population of New Orleans is 30% down on pre-Katrina levels although there has been significant new investment in the city post Katrina and New Orleans boasts an increase of 300 restaurants, $400 million of improvements to local hotels, $250 million of improvements to the Louisiana Superdome and $92.7 million of improvements to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, making it now one of the largest meeting venues in the U.S. and I guess that’s why we are here.

The city is still showing some of the scars of Katrina and the floods that followed and it’s fascinating and rather humbling to see the water line wherever you go in the city still clearly visible on walls and on the sides of buildings. Even where things have been cleaned up and are fully back to normal, the water marks can still be seen and sometimes they have been left on show as a ‘badge of honour’. Given 80% of New Orleans was under water the damage must have been immense. Locals told me it took 6 weeks to pump all the water out once the levee breaches had been filled. Looking at the city today it’s made an astonishing recovery.

I haven’t seen any numbers published for attendees but 40,000 were expected. It seemed less walking the floor. The CTIA claim to represent the world’s wireless industry with a focus on the US and on this point they over achieve. Being a regular attendee at MWC over many years I am tempted to make comparisons with MWC but is it fair to do so? As both camps claim to run the major show I guess this invites comparison. Maybe healthy competition between the two is good for the industry.

Perhaps this year’s CTIA show did give us a taste of things to come with the whole show contained under one gigantic roof. MWC 2013 will try the same trick, moving from the older, slightly decrepit but nonetheless charming Fira de Barcelona, to the ultra-modern Fira de Barcelona Gran Via Fira. Having attended both CTIA and MWC this year I feel I appreciated the opportunity to step outside the hall, take in the sun, and have an el fresco coffee and even an outdoor meeting or two. Escaping from the hustle and bustle of the halls does have its advantages but perhaps this is now to be lost forever.

CTIA lay on seven different shuttle bus routes which supply a hotel to convention centre transfer which works well and was well used. That’s something that maybe the GSMA should think about for 2013 especially as the new venue is off the beaten track, not on the metro and no longer in the heart of Barcelona.

There is another disadvantage of being inside all day long. Being all self-contained under one enormous roof, fully air-conditioned leaves one splendidly isolated from the outside world. So much so that I missed the tornado that passed by to the South on day two. Actually a double tornado! One of the main reasons for coming here was to see a tornado and I didn’t even know about it until I switched the TV on back in my hotel.

So here it is. A double twister (which is very rare I’m told). It ripped off roofs, knocked out electricity supplies and threw debris into streets. No injuries were reported; authorities said (accept my big toe when I kicked the door in frustration after seeing I’d missed it).