CTIA wrap: Welcome to the 3G revival

If you asked me last year what big new products infrastructure vendors would unveil this year at CTIA Wireless, I certainly would have said a GGSN. The gateway GPRS serving node has been in wireless networks for almost a decade, meeting the data plane needs not just of 3G networks but 2G before them. But last week, not one, but two vendors showcased new GGSNs and several more unveiled new upgrades to their cores.

CTIA Wireless often looks to the future, but this year the show was firmly grounded in the present. Rather than focus single-mindedly on long-term evolution and the next-generation of mobile services, carriers, vendors and application developers obsessed over the technologies, services and problems of today. Keynotes focused on the onslaught of mobile data carriers currently face, the need to optimize networks and applications, and the imperative of finding more spectrum. Rather than LTE base stations we got 3G femtocells. New iPhone and Android applications were around every corner. And, of course, vendors dragged mobile data gateways like the GGSN into the limelight from their relative obscurity in the core network, highlighting the need for ever more 3G capacity end to end.

As we predicted before the show, LTE took a backseat even though the first commercial deployments in the U.S. are just around the corner. In fact, earlier this year at Mobile World Congress, Europeans made a much bigger deal out of the first large-scale LTE deployments coming up in the U.S. than Americans did at their own trade show. Not that some didn’t try. Samsung and MetroPCS tried to stoke the fires with a sneak peek of the first LTE smartphone, but many of the media attendees seemed disappointed by the BREW-based device, which while ideal for Metro’s strategy of getting 4G smartphones out fast and easily, seemed underpowered compared to Sprint and HTC’s new EVO 4G Android smartphone.

Speaking of which, while LTE talk has been subdued, 4G in its WiMax form wasn’t lacking for attention. Sprint and Clearwire went all out at CTIA Wireless, touting their mobile broadband network and new devices as if their futures depended on it. In many ways they do. Sprint and Clearwire have less than a year to gain momentum for their WiMax service before VZW’s LTE service rolls out. That could be a lot of time or it could be very little. They’d better make the most of it.