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By
Alana
Grelyak
With tens of thousands of attendees,
four-hundred thousand square feet
of exhibit space, and international
participation from over one-hundred
countries, it is no wonder that CTIA
Wireless 2007 is at the top of the
anticipation lists for service providers,
software and hardware vendors, and
even OSS solutions providers. Pipeline
Magazine did some research to find
out what to look for during this major
event, occurring at the end of March,
2007.
CTIA, which bills itself as “the
voice of the wireless industry,”
was founded in 1984 as a non-profit
membership organization that represents
wireless data and Internet companies,
service providers, manufacturers,
and other contributors to the wireless
world. The CTIA Wireless event is
now in its twenty-fourth year and
plans to be bigger and better than
ever. CTIA Vice President Rob Mesirow
said, “Well you know, right
now we’re trending double digits
over where we were last time this
year in terms of total attendance,
and last year we had over forty thousand
so I feel pretty good saying we’re
going to beat last year.” Spirent,
one of this year’s presenters,
said, “We’ve been exhibiting,
attending, and speaking at this show
for many years. CTIA is the best wireless
show of the year. We have heard that
the attendance is up significantly
from previous years.”
A major attraction of this year’s
event is the 8,000 square foot wireless
building that will showcase the year’s
major applications. It is something
CTIA is trying out for the first time.
“In the past we’ve done
a wireless home, so it’s a sort
of an evolution from the wireless
home and reflects…sort of the
year of the enterprise activity,”
Mesirow said. “And what I mean
by that,” Mesirow went on, “is
that since Y2K everybody sort of spent
all this energy and time and money
on making sure that their infrastructure
was up to snuff…So everyone
upgraded all their infrastructure
in 2000…Now everybody’s
looking around and realizing they
haven’t done any meaningful
upgrades since 2000. Really, the majority
of this is all based on surveys and
other interviews and what these people
are saying across the board 100% is
it’s not are we going to integrate
wireless, it’s how we’re
going to integrate wireless.”
In order to add to the knowledge
base of the event, CTIA is proud
to welcome former United States President
George H.W. Bush and former President
Bill Clinton. Mesirow said that “these
men have an extraordinary amount
of knowledge because they saw everything
from the top.” Mesirow also
feels that having two leaders of
the free world speaking at CTIA
Wireless 2007 says a lot about
the importance of the wireless
industry. “The
CTIA is a lobbying body for the
wireless industry and they have
a lot of involvement with the government.
So it makes sense to
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A
major attraction of this year’s event
is the 8,000 square foot wireless building
that will showcase the year’s major
applications. |
have the leaders
of the free world speaking there.” At
past events, CTIA has had Mikhail
Gorbachev and a previous appearance
by President Bush.
CTIA, at this
event, plans to talk about the
challenges that wireless service
providers are facing in a changing
telecom world. “I
think a lot of it is how are these
networks going to evolve,” Mesirow
said.
“It really comes down to it’s
all about the network.” CTIA
is also doing whatever it can to
reach as broad of an audience as
possible with their ideas for solutions. “Right
now 20% of our audience is outside
of North America. We are often challenged
to make sure that we are talking
in terms of not just North America
but what’s happening around
the world. Quite frankly, there’re
a lot of good lessons because I
think, for us, where we are, Korea’s
already sort of been through this
expansion and build out and China’s
actually going through it right
now. So I think there are a lot
of things to learn from those that
have already gone through it.”
Depending
on who the audience is, the highlights
may change somewhat. However, Rob Mesirow
feels that one of the biggest highlights
to look for at the 2007 event is video.
“I think mobile video is going
to be a very hot topic,” Mesirow
said. “If I had to break it down
to a single application, I would say
video is going to be big…By the
way, I think this is important to point
out and I can’t say enough, the
video in terms of application, is going
to have ramifications from the enterprise
side as well as the consumer side. I
already know a lot of CIO’s that
are interested in the video…”
The other highlight,
in Mesirow’s opinion, is mobile
payments. “We have the head
of Visa that is going to be there
to talk about mobile payments. Mobile
payments is a huge huge multi-billion
dollar industry.” When asked
for comment about it’s presence
at CTIA Wireless 2007, Visa representatives
had this
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