CTIA Wireless 2011 conference Orlando, Fla. opened at March 22.The show itself appeared to attract lots of attendees. CTIA is reporting that more than 40,000 people attended the show last week, which featured products and services from more than 1,000 exhibitors. I believe that many of those attendees made their appearance on Tuesday. By Wednesday evening, it seemed as if many of the higher-level executives at companies had left town.

Every meeting, panel discussion and cocktail party conversation was dominated by talk about this impending acquisition and what it will mean to the industry. Although new products were launched at CTIA, including the LG Thrill 4G, the Nokia  Astound smartphone and Sprint's EVO 3D, those announcements were dwarfed by the implications of AT&T's deal.

Understandably, T-Mobile USA was largely absent from the show. After AT&T's announcement Sunday, the company dramatically reduced the number of executives attending the event and cancelled nearly all of the company's appearances on panels. T-Mobile did make some handset and network coverage announcements, but they generated little attention.

But companies exhibiting at CTIA clearly have changed from year's past. Gone are the booths touting mobile entertainment services. Also absent were some big name infrastructure vendors such as Alcatel Lucent . Instead, I saw rows and rows of tablet and smartphone accessory makers touting the latest in iPad covers and more.

Panel sessions included the usual debates on the promise of mobile payments and mHealth--but there was also a lot of discussion about increasing the depth and breadth of network coverage, whether that's through femtocells, picocells or other options.