Image Gallery: TESSCO One Innovation Showcase & Conference

The annual TESSCO One Innovation Showcase & Conference brings together manufacturers, engineers and wireless industry veterans to learn about the latest trends and topics relevant to their businesses.

Hosted by TESSCO Technologies, the provider of integrated product and supply-chain services for those who design, build, run, maintain or use wireless systems, the event is billed as “the premier event for those looking to launch their wireless business to the head of the pack.”

Held last week at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, Channel Partners was there. So were keynote speakers Jonathan Adelstein, president and CEO of PCIA; and Dan Ford, CSO of Silent Circle.

Click through our image gallery to see who else dropped in and get some surprising information about the wireless industry.

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Keynote speaker Jonathan Adelstein, head of PCIA, the Wireless Industry Infrastructure Association, noted to the crowd how wireless seems to be an unstoppable industry; yet, many obstacles remain.

One is cost. It’s expensive to deliver the systems that the public has come to expect. Keep in mind that the amount of data being used by our mobile devices is increasing exponentially, but the average revenue per user is actually on the decline. Consumers and business users are getting better deals for their dollars as price wars among the major carriers grow. The wireless operators aren’t the only ones feeling the pressure; everyone in the industry is impacted.

And that pressure will only mount as machine-to-machine communications and the Internet of Things expand.

Adelstein served as an FCC commissioner from 2002-2009 and was appointed the administrator of the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service by President Obama in 2009.

Adelstein further noted the need for the government to offer up more wireless waves.

“It’s essential for policymakers to establish more auctions to allocate spectrum,” he said.

A 600MHz broadcast TV spectrum is expected to start at the end of this month, but much more is needed, Adelstein said. Most of the time, considering the slow wheels of bureaucracy, by the time spectrum is actually allocated, more is needed.

On 5G: “It’s a long way from being in the hands of consumers. But we can’t afford to wait.”

Over the next five years, Adelstein said, millions of cell sites (Wi-Fi, small cells, etc.) will be needed to keep up with demand. This “infrastructure densification,” as he called it, “is the foundation for everything that will fuel the economy for years to come.

Two big challenges (besides cost) to reaching this goal?: regulation and a skilled workforce.

Dan Ford brought a pedigree to TESSCO One – his most notable role being director of network security at the Transportation and Security Administration (ITMS Program), which at the time was the largest managed service contract within the U.S. government.

Now, he’s the chief security officer at Silent Circle, responsible for global security and information-assurance initiatives at the company.

Naturally, Ford preached security to the audience, reminding them that big companies aren’t the only ones that make security-related mistakes.

“The moment you let down your guard is the moment you are compromised,” he said. And often you won’t know you’ve been hacked until weeks, or even months, later. Target was one such example, he noted.

On being nice to the security chief in your company: “Security officers are seen as the bad guys, but we’re often the ones to get fired [when there’s a serious breach]. “We need to find a way to say ‘yes,’ or employees won’t come to us.”

Sadly, he pointed out, nothing is entirely secure, but delaying patches to your operating system is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.

“Hackers tend to be lazy. Zero-day attacks are still rare,” he said. “There are plenty of [easy] targets out there [for malicious hackers].

Want to be scared? Ford strongly recommends against connecting your mobile device to a public Wi-Fi network. A decent hacker can access the other networks you’ve connected to (i.e. your home network) and wind up getting a lot of information about you that you don’t want to disclose.

At the Retail Experience Center on the show floor, TESSCO offered up a mock-store environment that featured industry experts speaking about the merchandising tips and tricks needed to optimize the presentation of devices and accessories. Also featured were the latest IoT technologies.

Across the stadium floor was the Commercial Experience Center, where attendees could see large-scale displays of the most common wireless systems and engage one-on-one with TESSCO’s solution architects and industry experts. Featured were backhaul, base-station and fleet-management technologies.

Home to more than 63,000 screaming Arizona Cardinals fans during the fall, the expansive University of Phoenix Stadium was an impressive setting for the TESSCO One event.