Sidecut Reports

Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead at CTIA keynote panel. Credit: Sidecut Reports.

Whether by luck or by design, the decision by Verizon Wireless to basically do nothing public at last week’s CTIA show worked out perfectly, leaving the nation’s top wireless carrier (for now) looking unruffled, unworried and pretty much unconcerned about the pending acquistion of T-Mobile by Verizon’s biggest competitor, AT&T.

It is somewhat understandable that Verizon took a break at CTIA — after all it’s had a pretty busy news schedule for the start of 2011, what with its over-the-top LTE device announcement at CES in January followed by the “We’ve got the iPhone” gymnastics in early February. Still, by not having any public event at CTIA Verizon didn’t have to spend time on its own stage answering questions about AT&T or T-Mobile. Instead, Verizon execs like wireless CEO Dan Mead got to play it cool whenever they were asked about the pending deal, as if there were a corporate edict to simply shrug and look unconcerned whenever the topic came up.

Mead’s reluctance to say anything at all about the AT&T deal, much less denigrate it in any fashion, is perhaps borne a bit by necessity — should Verizon want or need to do a deal of its own in the future, it doesn’t want any hypocritical comments out there. So for Big Red the big wireless show was all about execution and talking as much as they could about their 4G LTE network, which finally got its first smartphone just before the show opened up. (And that device earned a quick rave review from the notoriously tough Walt Mossberg, more good news for Verizon and HTC.)

For the rest of 2011, it looks like Verizon is in full execution mode as it tries to sell consumers and business users on the merits of its 4G implementation, even though the plans associated with the network only allow “unlimited” use via the phone handsets so far, and not through bandwidth-crunching devices like tablets or USB modems for laptops. The only announcement the company made during CTIA was to more clearly list all the small cities that will get LTE service sometime in 2011, a year during which Verizon should overtake Sprint and Clearwire in the number of markets served by a true 4G service.

That’s a lot of blocking, tackling, and tower-site building, so perhaps Verizon can be excused for being so boring at CTIA. Mead, for one, could only ironically thank motormouth Jim Cramer for being a Verizon customer, and stayed out of any verbal jabbing with his CEO counterparts Dan Hesse of Sprint and Ralph de la Vega of AT&T Mobility during their joint panel session. The most stirring things said by Mead were straight promo stuff, like this line — “This is the most robust network in the world. We’re proud of this LTE network.”

Not the kind of thing to grab a headline, but for Verizon that’s not what CTIA was about. Instead, it’s about building success on top of the 4G network they have already launched, and making it live in more places with more devices. Not a bad kind of boring, from many points of view.

Samsung’s mobile hotspot for Verizon’s LTE network. Credit: Verizon.

Samsung’s portable Wi-Fi hotspot for the Verizon LTE network is now available from the Verizon Wireless website, for $100 after rebates and a 2-year contract; however those wishing for an unlimited plan are out of luck, since the mobile hotspot will use the same data plans as the already launched LTE USB modems — $50 for 5 GB per month, or $80 for 10 GB per month.

The device (which we saw working live in the wild last week at CTIA) will be in stores Thursday, according to Verizon. In addition to LTE access it also provides backward-compatible access to Verizon’s 3G network so it can be a reliable broadband supplier to as many as five Wi-Fi devices you may have in your arsenal. For road warriors who spend a lot of time in major airports this device may be just the ticket since Verizon’s early LTE rollouts have made airport access a priority. It will be interesting to see how sales of this device stack up against the first offering in this arena, the Sprint Overdrive, which is now in its second iteration. Let the 4G pocketspots battle begin!

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse at CTIA. Credit: Sidecut Reports

You knew Dan Hesse was taking this chairman of CTIA thing seriously when he showed up in Orlando last week wearing black dress shoes instead of his surfer-casual Vans. But Dan’s plans for another blockbuster CTIA were waylaid by the AT&T-T-Mobile takeover announcement, an industry-shattering news event that put a big stink on Sprint’s plans to show itself as a cellular leader.

Without a doubt, Sprint still had the coolio introduction of the show in the mind-bending HTC EVO 3D phone alongside a true 4G tablet, also from HTC. In its usual cutting-edge hip fashion Sprint paid to slice off a largish amount of the show floor to stage its 3D press event, with a small media stage and a whole bunch of nightclubby couches intermixed with gratutitous food stations and even an open bar serving up martinis just after lunchtime on Tuesday.

But even though media types and regular boothgoers crowded the Sprint stations to get a hands-on demo of the eye-popping 3D phone (you really have to see one to experience the coolness of the device) the whole week felt like AT&T had just set off a big stink-bomb at the Sprint party, because every appearance, every panel session and just about every hallway conversation revolved around the new new question: How the heck will Sprint be able to compete as an incredibly distant No. 3 in the U.S. cellular market?

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