CTIA (I think that used to stand for Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, but this seems to be yet another organization that has ditched the expansion and shifted to just the acronym) hosts an annual trade show. This year the trade show was held in Las Vegas and, as usual, it was all about the world of wireless, with a lot of emphasis on wireless broadband. There is a pretty good summary of the trends observed in this 9 minute and 16 seconds audio cast. If you don't have the time to listen, it boils down to:

• There's a war brewing between WiMax and LTE. Can the users benefit from yet another technology war? This article considers the likely outcome for such a war. In a nutshell, LTE wins.
• Open application development is increasingly a challenge to the closed-network model of the carriers (once you can browse the Web from your phone, you can use the browser to bypass the locked down nature of so many phones
• Social networking is going to intersect with the mobile Internet (can you say Twitter on my phone?)
• There's increased activity on the regulation front, especially at the state level, and the wireless carriers (big surprise) are pushing back.

If you have the time, though, it's worth a listen.