CTIA Wireless 2004

By Ernest Lilley, Alex Pournelle

April 5, 2004

(CTIA Wireless 2004 :  Page 1 of 1 )

CTIA 2004 was held in Atlanta, GA this March amid an early spring. Peach blossoms and the economy were both beginning to bloom, and the mood throughout was cautiously optimistic.

Last year at CTIA New Orleans the mood was pensive, and the question on everyone's lips was "What do you think will be the next killer app?" Thankfully, no one asked us that this year, and everyone seemed a bit more relaxed about the growth of the industry and the economy. Killer apps, like all revolutionary events, are only recognizable in hindsight, and until we one appears we won't know it.

A lot of hopes were placed on camera phones to energize the market, but carriers seem to be happy with their gradual adoption, though they're aggressively pursing the technology to make it more attractive by changing to 1.2 megapixel camera phones. The GSM carriers are beginning to roll out their own high-speed data networks (EDGE) to compete with the CDMA based CDMA2000 networks, which are also getting tweaked for faster speeds. That's good, because some of the new services will need a lot more bandwidth. Voice over IP (VoIP) and VoIP/Wi-Fi promise interesting things to come in the next year or two as handsets and carriers work out the details of handing calls off from cell towers to home networks, and most of the major carriers have at least one Bluetooth phone in their lineup, allowing you to take advantage of the profusion of Bluetooth headsets and other devices now available.

Cell Phone of the (Near) Future

We were pretty impressed with the watchability of Sprint's MobiTV, despite a certain amount of latency due to the cellular traffic congestion on the showfloor.<>  Page 1 of 1  BYTE.com > Conference Coverage > 2004

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