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.