If you are in mobile communications, the place to be this week is CTIA Wireless in San Francisco. The concentration of wireless knowledge is just about as great as the concentration of free booze and food.

The major event for Geogad was SiRF’s Location 2.0 summit. This full day event consisted of moderated panels from industry experts and pitches from local startups. The part that I liked most was the frank talk about the new GPS system that Europe is creating to compete with the US GPS satellite system. According to the experts, the 3 billion euro project will actually end up costing 10 billion and will be competed around 2016, not the current estimate of 2013. Ouch! It has been a great way for the US system to become more competitive and to improve faster. It does make you wonder if the European system might be out of date by the time it is put in place.

I was not able to attend the keynotes at CTIA, but this gave me a wonderful way to ask people what they thought were the best points from the keynotes. The thing that seemed to make waves was Yahoo’s Blueprint system. It seems to be a free way for developers to quickly and easily make mobile web sites and mobile widgets and web apps. I cannot speak to the usefulness or the quality of Blueprint, but it may make things more difficult for the service providers that are currently creating the mobile sites for small and medium sized businesses.

This latest story just goes to show how far out of the loop I am. I had thought that the Apple SDK was already released and developers were programming away. But according to BrandWeek, the iPhone will not be opened up to regular third-party developers until June. I will definitely be keeping my eyes open for info on how the new apps are working on the iPhone.

Things are really getting interesting in wireless now.

RCR Wireless had an interesting story on the availability of the iPhone. It turns out that the big carrier get into exclusive distribution deals with cell phone manufacturers. It locks out the small carriers and their customers from buying these phones. These deals are not new. The most recent and widely discussed such deal is the AT&T and Apple iPhone deal. What is a little surprising was the tone of the article. It starts out focusing on all handsets, but the middle of the story is on the hardship of rural customers going without the iPhone.

It seems like Apple is creating another paradigm shift. These exclusive deals are not new. But if there is a change to the law to get around these deals, will we have the iPhone cache to thank for it? After all, what other cell phone would get people so riled up?

RCR Wireless had a great cost analysis from Shawn Conahan on what the balance sheets might look like if a big wireless carrier like Sprint decided to switch from being a tightly controlled carrier to a more open “dumb pipe”. The analysis is great because he compares the actual reported numbers and to his theoretical numbers. Conahan’s analysis is not very rosy for the carrier, and that is assuming that they can charge their customers around $50/month. This value is basically what they are pulling in now.

I think the analysis is wonderful for a talking point, but I have to disagree with the assumption on what the carrier would be able to charge their customers. As I have discussed previously, the carriers make their money on charging lots of money for voice. They can’t charge much for data, and the prices for data are dropping like a rock. Competition is increasing from unexpected sources. For example, Skype and other low cost voice communication methods are able to offer low cost communication by piggybacking on the data delivery services. Whether you use Conahan’s numbers or a lower revenue number that I think is more reasonable, the results are the same. The carriers just can’t survive being a dumb pipe.

The difficulty of being a dumb pipe is clearly shown by the Earthlink Wi-Fi network in Philadelphia. It has been built to cover 80% of the city at no cost to taxpayers, and Earthlink can’t even find anyone to give the network to. Even the city of Philadelphia does not want to pony up the money to keep it running.  How bad is a business model when you can’t even give it away for free?

On a related note is Google bidding for wireless spectrum last month. When Google was talking about buying wireless spectrum, I figured that it was just a ruse. Google knows how to work on the edge of the network, but they know nothing about running one of these costly, complex and low margin networks. They would be crazy to get into the data network business.

Yesterday I expanded my network by attending the very excellent SVC Wireless Networking Dinner.  If you are not familiar with SVC Wireless, they are the Silicon Valley-China Wireless Tech Association.  They are a great organization that has a ton of events with all sorts of relevant speakers and networking events.  I usually am hard pressed to get time for all their events, but I always try to attend their annual meetings.  They take about half of a Saturday and include speakers from the top mobile companies.  For me this is a short cut to actually going to Asia.  I have been told that Asia is about a couple of years ahead of the US in cell phone usage, although the US is catching up.  If something works in Asia, then there is a good chance it will work here. 

The dinner was a wonderful networking opportunity.  Everyone was interested in talking about their business and searching for possible collaborations.  It was a very energetic environment.

I was so interested in talking with other attendees that person in charge had to politely tell us to come to dinner three times. Ken Liew, VP Networking, and Allie Xiong, Director Networking, were great organizers and made a point of introducing everyone.

 The choice of restaurant was also inspired.  The great Singaporean food at Prima Taste USA was inspired.  I would kill for the recipe for the baby squid appetizer and the ladyfingers. 

You can join SVC Wireless for free to get the newsletters and emails.  For only $50 you can become a full member and get in free to their events.  In Silicon Valley, this is a great deal and explains how they have 3800 members.

Technorati tags: Silicon Valley, SVC Wireless, wireless, networking, Prime Taste USA, Singapore food