Rich Karpinski

Quite correctly, the majority of attention and focus at next week's CTIA show will fall to operator plans to roll out 4G networks and services and the efforts of radio and core IP vendors to enable that mobile broadband infrastructure. But as the mobile industry continues to swallow up everything in its path - and with the CTIA show itself following a similar trajectory.

Tom Evslin, Vermont's Chief Technology Officer, is working to bring broadband to the small, northeastern state.

Count Level 3 as one of the few established telecom service providers to apply for -- and this week win -- federal broadband stimulus funding, with a pragmatic goal not of opening up broad new fiber vistas but rather extending its existing network and services where it makes business sense. But it demonstrates how an established service provider, and not just new broadband entrants, can take advantage of stimulus funding to both move forward laudable goals of serving rural or other remote areas while also advancing their core business strategy.

It's difficult to criticize any effort to boost the capacity of broadband networks here in the U.S. But forgive us for feeling that high-profile demo deployments, attention-grabbing announcements and even over-arching national plans are unlikely to truly drive broadband deployments.

Now that we've seen the dust settle around Google's entry into the mobile phone business, what are the real takeaways and impacts of the move - particularly for traditional mobile operators?

Has there ever been a more important year for the telecommunications industry?

It's been years since IP slowly but surely began infiltrating into mainstream carrier networks. In 2010 it's poised to make its biggest impact ever.

Recent Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement talks reportedly have placed proposals on the table that would force Internet service providers to watch for and ultimately punish illegal downloaders of copyrighted content.

a future of a "trillion" devices - some consumer-oriented but exponentially more communicating over machine-to-machine links - actually offers service providers a much larger opportunity to serve as bullet-proof network provider and single-point-of-contact helping customers manage this new hyper-connected world.

Deep packet inspection (DPI) is evolving into something new.