Parsing the CTIA keynotes

LTE or WiMAX? What's your flavor?

CTIA is again delivering a lineup of heavy-hitters at its annual spring conference with CEOs and division presidents from all corners of the industry. So what can we expect after Steve Largent kicks off the April 1 keynotes in Las Vegas?

Long-term evolution (LTE) and Mobile WiMAX will be big themes at this year's show — finally a new G to hype! — and opening day promises dueling keynotes on both. Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam likely will extol the virtues of LTE, while Sprint's new head man Dan Hesse will do the same for WiMAX.

But both have a lot more on their plates than 4G. Verizon has made it very clear that LTE is still a distant technology, and it has the more immediate concern of its new open-access policy. This week, Verizon Wireless will give the first peek at the specs that device-makers and app developers will have to meet to gain access to the carrier's once-forbidden CDMA and EV-DO networks. There won't be a person in the room who doesn't have an acute interest in how McAdam's open-access plans take shape.

Meanwhile, Hesse will be under the specter of Sprint's dismal operational and financial performance. He's going to want to talk about WiMAX. He's going to want to talk about Sprint's unlimited price plans — and maybe toss out a few props for femtocells and the company's upcoming CDMA push-to-talk service. But what everyone will want to hear about is the possibility of a Sprint buyout and how negotiations are proceeding with Clearwire and potential investors in the WiMAX Xohm network. They'll want to know if this WiMAX thing is really going to take off.

Will Hesse acknowledge the elephant in the room? Probably not, said Peter Jarich of Current Analysis. “Sprint has a habit of going to these presentation opportunities to make some bold new announcement about technology or service,” Jarich said. “They never say what people are waiting to hear, though.”

To make the LTE/WiMAX debate interesting, CTIA is flying a pair of Europeans across the Atlantic. No one seems to have a clue what Virgin's Sir Richard Branson will say. And as for Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin, you'd expect VZW's part-owner and LTE trial partner to play the heavy for LTE, but Sarin may have another agenda in mind. At Mobile World Congress in February, Sarin made the interesting comment that he'd like to see LTE and WiMAX merged into the same standard, thus creating a unified architecture the entire world can support. He's likely to repeat such sentiments at CTIA — and perhaps engage in some group hugs with a few thousand attendees.

For a finale, CTIA is trotting out the CEOs of the four largest wireless infrastructure vendors in the world: Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens and Nortel. What do they all have in common? An LTE product line. And guess who's moderating? McAdam, CEO of the newly baptized LTE convert Verizon. “This will be an LTE love fest,” said Roger Entner, analyst for IAGR. Sure, three of the four are big WiMAX backers, Entner said, but are they going to pump up WiMAX in front of their biggest potential LTE customers?