CES 2024 in Las Vegas is a wrap. I’ve concluded that CES is no longer a telecom event. Still, I’m glad I went to CES.
This is now the fourth conference I’ve covered for Fierce Wireless in the past year, having also written about the All Wireless & Prepaid Expo, WISPAmerica 2023, 5G Americas, and now CES. I’ve been attending telecom conferences since 1997, including two years of attendance at Russia’s largest telecom conference.
But I have to say that CES has lost its telecom fastball.
There were no keynotes related to telecom, unlike the situation in 2021, when Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg gave a spirited and informative virtual keynote address, famously saying that due to the pandemic, “we leapfrogged five to seven years in the digital revolution.” This year, there were few if any talks related to telecom on the conference program.
I walked the main show floor at the Las Vegas Convention Center and did not see any booths related to telecom services. It turns out that AT&T did have a booth at the convention center, but I missed it amid the rush of meetings and logistics issues. I did visit the booths of Samsung and TCL, which were mostly not focused on smartphones. That said, I did look at their smartphones and had good conversations at the booths.
What about Pepcom and ShowStoppers?
Pepcom and ShowStoppers events for journalists and analysts have long been the “shows before the shows” at CES and at other tech conferences. These are invitation-only, intended strictly for analysts and journalists. Both are pleasant and physically compact, and half the reason I attend them is to reconnect with fellow analysts and journalist contacts. ShowStoppers had 90 exhibitors and 860 journalists and analysts. Contacts with ShowStoppers told me that it had tracked “more than 9,000 articles/posts/videos in coverage of companies at ShowStoppers.” Pepcom seemed to be even larger.
Both events were well-organized, pleasant and worthwhile for hordes of tech journalists. Food was abundant. However, these events had virtually no presence for telecom companies, except that I had a good chat with MobileX’s PR team, as seen in my January 9 tweet.
Horrible logistics and expenses
CES 2024 had more than 135,000 attendees. Getting around by car is not a good idea, and buses sometimes have long waiting times and they often get stuck in traffic. There are long waits for ride share services at the convention center, and these cars also get stuck in traffic. My advice is to schedule as many meetings as possible in the same location.
One pro tip is to escape the convention center by monorail. I did this on Wednesday, paying only $6 for a short traffic-free ride to a hotel, where I quickly got a ride to the airport, after getting a thorough briefing about the people of Ethiopia from a very friendly Uber driver.
My strategy is to arrive at CES early and leave early. Hotel rates on the Sunday before CES are affordable. By Tuesday, a king’s ransom is necessary to get a hotel room.
All about the hospitality suites
Verizon and T-Mobile had hospitality suites at top Vegas Strip hotels, as did other telecom-related companies, including TCL. I visited the TCL hospitality suite and had a fruitful discussion with TCL officials about telecom competition. There was some face-to-face quality time with people I previously knew basically from their email addresses.
To be clear, hospitality suite visits are by invitation only. That said, such meetings are usually productive, and they are in a pleasant environment.
Dinners and lunches – the best part
For me, the best part of CES 2024 was the meals. MobileX CEO Peter Adderton and his team invited a small number of analysts and journalists to a top sushi restaurant, as seen in this January 9 tweet from Adderton. The conversation was excellent, and I am confident that we will be hearing more from MobileX in 2024.
Cox hosted a luncheon for analysts and journalists at Piero’s Italian Cuisine and my January 9 tweet about the event is here. I had a chance to chat face-to-face with Cox officials at a pleasant Italian restaurant, which definitely is better than just exchanging emails.
I also had dinner with a veteran telecom executive. The Irish food was excellent, but more to the point, the dinner was a boost to my Rolodex.
Over beer at a Bellagio bar, I think I received an invitation to speak at another conference. More on that later.
Verizon’s out-of-home advertising for 2024
Usually when I go to a conference, I rent a car and visit carrier stores. Not this time. However, I can confirm that Verizon’s message – based on RootMetrics studies – of making localized claims of having the best network is continuing into 2024. There was “takeover” advertising at a Las Vegas monorail station, as I tweeted on January 12. Pervasive Verizon signage at the station stated that Verizon has the “#1 network in Vegas” and “the network Las Vegas relies on.” CES arrivals saw similar Verizon signage at the airport baggage claim, as I tweeted on January 7.
What about CES 2025?
The conference seems to have put the pandemic behind it. Aside from a few retail workers wearing masks, the show looked about the same as it did pre-pandemic.
I plan to return for CES 2025. Yes, it was expensive, exhausting, and challenging. However, many of us in the telecom industry should attend nonetheless. Building relationships is crucial. As a rule of thumb, if you have a lot of meetings, dinners, and visits to hospitality suites, you should go. If not, then it probably is not worth the effort.
Did I really attend Russia’s top telecom conference during the 1990s? Yes, I attended Sviaz in Moscow in 1997 and 1998 and even staffed a booth for a U.S. telecom equipment company in 1998. The Sviaz website is here. It was worthwhile to attend back then, but I cannot recommend attending Sviaz 2024.
Jeff Moore is Principal of Wave7 Research, a wireless research firm that covers U.S. postpaid, prepaid, and smartphone competition. Moore has 25 years of telecom industry experience, including 13 years of competitive intelligence work for Sprint. Follow him on Twitter @wave7jeff.
Industry Voices are opinion columns written by outside contributors—often industry experts or analysts—who are invited to the conversation by Fierce Wireless staff. They do not necessarily represent the opinions of Fierce Wireless.