CTIAd Out

So it’s over ─ another CTIA slips into the stream of telecom history. There were parties, there were device announcements and much discussion of Big Themes. There was plenty of news but not overwhelmingly so. And speaking of news, there was the usual inter-trade-publication-journalist fraternization, which involved far too many Irish pubs.

Before I talk about the show, I have to relate this anecdote: On the plane today I was watching episodes of the Showtime series “Californication” (featuring David Duchovny, pre-rehab) on my iPod (the Nano screen’s not bad, actually), and the guy next to me was watching video as well. When we landed, the lady in the aisle seat leans into middle-seat-video-watching guy and jabs a finger at his iPod and says: “What is that thing?” When told, she says: “What does it do? How can you watch anything on that thing?”

Now, this is not an old gray-haired woman, nor did she have a lives-under-a-rock vibe. No, not at all. She just represents that silent majority of the country that we in the comms biz forget exists: the people who don’t spend their days obsessing about technology.

Anyway. Yes, another CTIA. Always a good show, and a fun show. But this fall’s incarnation failed to really wow. It was just ...eh.

Open access was one of the big ideas bandied about, as expected, but the carrier roundtable on the subject simply delineated the operator line that integration and standardization and interoperability are standing in the way of a truly open world. Hmm. Also hot was the idea of intuitive location-based services (push or pull? You tell me) and search, the role of mobile advertising, and how to monetize data (answer: “Who the hell knows?”). That’s interesting, but again, it’s early days.

In general, hot-data applications seemed to be the focus, and given this show is the entertainment-focused version of CTIA, that makes sense. Conspicuously absent though was news about networks or towers or radios or, you know, infrastructure in general.

The carriers were there and there in force, as if to say, you know, “Hey! We’re still here and still relevant.” No one’s taking your thunder away, there, Dan Hesse. Promise. Well, maybe Verizon Wireless, which was just a news release junkie at the show, but all for minor announcements. But they snagged the most square footage ... err, inch-age in the press release wall.

The keynotes were president-free (Bush and Clinton spoke one year, memorably). We did get Craig McCaw reminiscing about the good old days of the giant brick phones and the dollar-a-minute rate plans. He’s got the knowledge and experience part down, but if we could just get him to take some public speaking lessons. Seriously, zzzzzzzzz, dude.

The second day was all about what teens want. And there’s nothing funnier than listening to a bunch of paunchy old white guys talking about what the whippersnappers really want. It was like the RNC all over again.

So it was all fine. But there was a lack of excitement, and a good bit of phoning it in. I chalk it up to fatigue ─ between constrained spending budgets, a whirlwind year of intense transformation in the discussion of wireless’ future (data, data, data ─ but do consumers want it?) and following the whole Sarah Palin-mania thing (I think “hockey moose” has legs as the next great artificial demographic, BTW), people need a break.

Meanwhile, I need a nap.

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