CTIA opens today in New Orleans, for the first time in seven years.  In that time, both the show and the city have changed dramatically.  From Wireless Week magazine:

Whereas seven years ago the themes of the CTIA show were driven by wireless service providers and handset manufacturers, that’s not the case these days. This year’s keynotes include a panel with wireless operator executives, but other keynotes feature Mozilla, Pandora, Spotify, Visa, Electronic Arts and MasterCard. Attendee demographics also have expanded to encompass more retailers, dealers, distributors and resellers.

Apps are changing the industry as carriers and handset manufacturers, both, are seeking partnerships with app and content providers to differentiate their products and services.

For the network, this can only mean more signaling and bandwidth challenges, on top of the unsolved problems of today.

The 4G/LTE network roll out is expected to help with added bandwidth, but it may lead users to use more data neutralizing that benefit.  For signaling, though, 4G/LTE won’t be a fix for a number of reasons including the flat network design and the fact that the only devices on a 4G network are smartphones (more on this in a future blog post).

On the positive note, our Open Channel traffic optimization software is making great progress in carrier trials with real world results that are meeting, or exceeding, our lab results.  Open Channel addresses the bandwidth and signaling challenges from end to end by eliminating unnecessary network requests, and reducing the overall amount of chattiness created by apps on the network.

With a mass migration from a wired world to everything mobile at the forefront of the industry and the network, traffic optimization is going to be a critical part of keeping network performance and user satisfaction very high.