What did it all mean? Beyond the stickiness, tawdriness and sleaze of New Orleans and the haze of what clearly has become a telecom industry show that emphasizes entertainment over technology (which is not to say flash over substance because that would be inaccurate), what did the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association's Wireless 2005 event teach us about the past, present and future of wireless?

First it taught us that wireless is dead — but long live wireless. The mobile industry as we know it is fast disappearing, to be replaced by the oft-yapped-about and not-yet-realized concept of wireline/wireless network convergence. For that we have IMS, or the IP multimedia subsystem, to thank. IMS will help service providers meld networks at a protocol level that was heretofore impossible — and for that, we have IP to thank.

What IMS will let service providers — and wireless service provider hopefuls, of which there are many flying the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) banner, including the incumbent cable operators — realize is an IP-compliant (and ultimately all-IP) network core that can distribute all manner of multimedia content over any and all access media, be it wireline or wireless, cable or fiber or just plain spectrum.

Now back to the flash and sleaze — or at least the flash because the sleaze has a life of its own in the Big Easy and doesn't seem to need the wireless industry to help it along. Make no bones about it: The mobile industry and the entertainment industry are quickly becoming one. They may not have similar DNA (in fact, it couldn't be less similar), but the same market and technology forces pushing wireline and wireless networks closer together are likewise merging mobility and entertainment — not just from a technology or content perspective, but from a personality perspective as well.

The CTIA event was a hands-down demonstration of that (and I'm now talking about the show held earlier this month, not the association's I.T. & Entertainment show in San Francisco last October, when I went to a Def Jam Mobile party and convinced old-school rapper Doug E. Fresh to call my wife on my mobile phone because she was a huge fan in her high-school years). The telltale sign this time around was an 8:30 a.m. press and analyst breakfast sponsored by VeriSign — perhaps one of the most techie outfits in all of telecom — that was attended by hip-hop impresario Kevin Liles, who not only paid attention but also asked intelligent questions.

When a music industry executive who runs with Russell Simmons and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs is interested in how VeriSign is enabling the wireless experience for MVNOs, you have to know that the wireless industry is never — and I mean never — going to be the same.