Will CTIA Wireless become the LTE show?

Mobile World Congress may have overshadowed CTIA Wireless in recent years, but it may have unwittingly presented CTIA with a big opportunity. CTIA could be poised to become the long-term evolution (LTE) show.

MWC, for all its glitz and international allure, has failed to take up the LTE mantle in a big way. In Barcelona, vendors talked up their LTE technology, a few new contracts and trials were announced, but walking the aisles at the industry’s largest trade show, one got the distinct impression that LTE is considered a technology of the distant future. The focus at this year’s Congress was on the high-speed packet access plus (HSPA+) networks being launched, on the 3G tablets and smartphones that were fueling operator’s growth today—not on the LTE devices and services that would shape them in the future.

That’s completely understandable considering the Congress’s grounding in the European operator community. But that outlook fails to acknowledge that there were live commercial LTE networks on the other side of Atlantic and at the other end of the Eurasian continent. Forget acknowledgement--in some cases, there is actual disbelief (CP: Uncovering the U.S. LTE ‘conspiracy’).
That presents a huge opportunity for CTIA, which is looking for a new differentiator now that CDMA’s star is waning. CTIA Wireless has always been a critical show for CDMA operators in Asian and Latin America since the technology—outside of its wideband format—was practically anathema at the GSM Association’s annual winter extravaganza. The trend started to shift two years ago as CDMA operators began to pursue LTE. Suddenly in line with the primary global standard, Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ, NYSE:VOD) found a much larger global audience at MWC and consequentially made many of its significant announcements there.

At this year’s Congress, VZW was by no means ignored—Verizon is still a celebrated win for the 3GPP camp--but you got the impression that people were largely indifferent to what it was doing with its new network back in the States. It’s hard to get excited about what you can’t see or touch. Given the priorities of the operators that dominate MWC, we may see Verizon shifting its network focus back to CTIA, just as it’s shifted its device focus to CES.

CTIA vice president of operations Rob Mesirow certainly isn’t blind to that opportunity. He believes that LTE already has gone a long way to reversing CTIA’s recent decline in attendance. Next week in Orlando, CTIA expects 40,000 attendees and more than 1000 exhibitors, returning CTIA to its 2008 levels. Much of that boost comes from an 18% increase in international registrants. “I’m sure a good deal of that is due to North America’s focus on LTE,” Mesirow said. CTIA Wireless has traditionally attracted a large crowd from Latin America and Asia, but the most surprising surge is coming from Europe. One after Europe’s mega-trade show, European operators, developers and enterprises are flying across the Atlantic to learn about their future LTE networks, Mesirow said.

Mesirow acknowledges that technology trends can be cyclical. “We’re building LTE and monetizing it,” Mesirow said. “Someone eventually is going to leapfrog over us, and at some point we’ll leapfrog over them.”

But the cycle is turning toward North America today. Half of the world’s commercially launched LTE networks are in the U.S., deployed by MetroPCS (NYSE:PCS) and Verizon. By the end of the year, the U.S. will have a third large-scale LTE network, AT&T’s (NYSE:T). If Sprint (NYSE:S) switches technologies as expected and LightSquared overcomes its funding and regulatory obstacles, the U.S. will play host to five LTE networks by the end of 2012. With Rogers’ planned launch this year, the total could be as high as six.

“Are we going to become the LTE show?” Mesirow said. “Yes, we are.”