Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the CTIA Wireless 2010 Conference in Las Vegas. It was an eventful few days spent attending panels and talking to others in the industry. In this business, I’ve been to my fair share of conferences, and while they’re always insightful, this year’s CTIA Wireless was by far the most exciting.

Our industry is on the brink of real, substantive change and you could feel it among the participants, panelists, analysts and media. Between the national broadband plan, developments in technology and a much better understanding of the possibilities of 4G wireless technology, the anticipation and sense of community was palpable.

There were several significant threads that ran throughout the conference that I thought were particularly compelling.

• WiMAX and LTE. While there’s significant interest in positioning WiMAX and LTE as competitors, I remain firm in my stance that WiMAX and LTE are sibling technologies. As we say here in New England, “all boats rise in high tide.” We believe that increased developments in LTE are good for WiMAX and vice versa. The most important takeaway is that the public, investors and developers are actively interested and monitoring the progression of wireless innovation and 4G progress. How can that be bad?
• The Smartphone Revolution. There’s no question that the Smartphone revolution is underfoot. There is a wealth of opportunity that has emerged over the past year as we’ve very quickly passed the early adoption phase. The applicability of the interest in Smartphones, in addition to the demand by consumers for a wireless system to support it, are huge and will continue to be dominant themes in the minds of investors, the media and the industry as a whole. We’re actively monitoring these developments at Towerstream and look forward to seeing how the industry responds when new products, such as the iPad hit the mainstream market.

Overall, this is an exciting time to be in telecommunications, which is significant when you consider the roller coaster that the economy has taken the past few years. There was a larger feeling of community between software, programmers, infrastructure and developers as we discussed new possible entrants into the market. Between the debates about whether LTE will live up to the hype, to the Stimulus Plan, to the ambitious Broadband plan, well, these are heady times! We’ve felt this kind of excitement at Towerstream. We are continuing to grow and have a number of new initiatives planned for 2010. It’s a great time to be in wireless!

What did you think of CTIA? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @Towerstream.