Boingo's Dayton, VoiceStream's Stanton to keynote at CTIA's Wireless 2002
You read it here first: Sky Dayton, founder of Boingo Wireless and Earthlink, and John Stanton, chairman and CEO of VoiceStream Wireless, will be among the keynote speakers on the first day of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association's (CTIA) Wireless 2002 conference and exposition. Dayton and Stanton will be on stage on March 18, the first day of the three-day event at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla.
Dayton and Stanton probably will be competitors. I say "probably" because VoiceStream hasn't officially announced that it has purchased MobileStar, the 802.11 network company that's in Chapter XI proceedings. VoiceStream has put in a bid for MobileStar, and everyone is waiting for the final legal approvals to make it official.
Boingo is aggregating most of the other public access 802.11 networks across the U.S., so Boingo and VoiceStream (if/when it buys MobileStar) will be going head-to-head to capture the hearts and subscription fees of traveling executives who want true high-speed wireless Internet while on the road.
Dayton and Stanton won't be going head-to-ahead during the keynote event. Each keynoter is given his moment in the sun with Thomas Wheeler, the smart, sharp and politically-savvy president of the CTIA. A keynote "presentation" is actually a one-on-one discussion with Wheeler. Once the discussion ends, the keynoter goes backstage, and another keynoter takes the chair. So, don't count on any on-stage debates between WiFi competitors, though there might be some interesting discussions in the off-stage waiting room!
A bit of involvement
I had a bit of a hand in helping to arrange participation by one of these executives. Also, for the sixth year, I'm going to help conduct Wireless Data University, a day-long pre-conference workshop, and one of the roundtable discussions will be about wireless local area and wireless personal area networks. The one-hour roundtable will delve into the tough, practical issues of technologically and economically integrating 802.11, cellular and also Bluetooth.
As I've written previously, the CTIA's annual conference is the wireless show to attend in the U.S. Wireless 2002 will have even more famous keynoters, such as Intel chairman Andy Grove, NTT DoCoMo president and CEO Dr. Keiji Tachikawa, former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev and FCC chairman Michael Powell. There are other big names, too.
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