Four areas to watch beyond the radio

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 - other areas merit attention too.

Here are four:

1) LTE and other technologies roll out of the labs and into field tests and ultimately into commercial deployment this year, test vendors are all over this opportunity.

2) Mobile billing.

3) Platforms enabling both device makers, mobile operators and their various sales and distribution channels better deal with today's more complex mobile value chain.

4) IP core, Gigabit Ethernet.