CTIA 2013: Who's Speaking and Why?

This year's CTIA trade show won't just be the usual parade of carrier CEOs. As we're looking into how we're going to cover the top mobile industry trade show in the U.S. from May 21-23, we're trying to figure out what the keynote lineup means to the announcements coming at the show. 

Traditionally, major wireless carriers have played a big role in the first day of CTIA, with the second day about applications and mobile business, and the third day featuring a celebrity corralled to keep conventioneers from leaving town early. That's been upset a little bit with this year's lineup, which has a surprising focus on international wireless talent.

All of this is gearing up for a big shift at CTIA in 2014. Next year, the wireless trade association is completely remaking its show, shifting it to fall and combining with both European electronics fair IFA and CCA, the American group of smaller wireless carriers. That's going to make for a show with potentially more punch in terms of product releases for the holiday season.

But who's speaking this year? Day 1 is José María Álvarez-Pallete López, COO of Spanish mega-carrier Telefonica. Telefonica owns major carriers in 10 Latin American countries and seven European countries, but doesn't have any properties here in the U.S. Is Telefonica trying to buy a U.S. carrier to extend its reach?

Maybe not. Wrap in the Day 2 afternoon keynote and pay some attention to the CTIA floor from the past few years and the story becomes clearer. Day 2 afternoon is Jennifer Lopez, Verizon CMA Marni Walden, and Brightstar CEO Marcelo Claure, who controls phone distribution to a lot of those non-carrier-affiliated shops which sell phones. 

Over the past few years at CTIA we've been seeing a larger presence from phone makers like Plum, Blu, and Unnecto, which sell a lot of handsets in Latin America; in the U.S., they're mostly associated with less expensive, prepaid phones sold independently of SIM cards. The focus on the U.S. Latino and Latin American markets is obvious here, but the way it may spill over for the rest of us is if the idea of prepaid devices, with service sold independently, really catches fire at CTIA.

There's also a panel on Day 1 with the CEO of U.S. Cellular and execs from GM, Target, Qualcomm, Adobe, and Alcatel-Lucent. Expect that to be about stuff described with words like enterprise, vertical, and machine-to-machine - not consumers' favorite things to hear about, but technologies that affect you every day.

On Day 2 we have Thomas Kiessling, chief product officer from Deutsche Telekom, as well as guys from Rovio, SocialRadar, and Walmart. CTIA is coming right after the merger between T-Mobile and MetroPCS closes, and while this crowd will definitely talk about apps, I'm hoping Kiessling will take time to discuss T-Mobile's plans with MetroPCS firmly in hand.

And then there's Day 3. That's Ashton Kutcher this year. Will he do a Steve Jobs impersonation? Will he talk about his million Twitter followers? Will he give VC investment tips? Will there be any actual tech content to this one at all? I guess we'll have to see from May 21-23, in Las Vegas. We'll be there.