The opening keynotes at the CTIA shows are always interesting. Steve Largent, CEO of CTIA, usually starts with some teasing stats about the cellular industry. He reminded us that there were now 2.5 billion cellular subscribers worldwide and 262 million U.S. subscribers. Incidentally, 28% of those are 3G subscribers—more than we all thought. Better still, the U.S. now has greater 3G penetration than Europe.

Cellular growth is still good in an otherwise down economic market place. Interestingly, 20% of carrier revenue is now data thanks to a huge text messaging business. We are now sending 75 billion text messages per month. Impressive.

Steve introduced a great panel comprising some heavy-hitting CEOs, including Robert Dotson of T-Mobile, Lowell McAdam of Verizon, and Dan Hesse of Sprint Nextel, to discuss open systems. They all agreed that the 3G rollout is driving the movement to make cell phones “open,” that is, not dictated by the carrier so subscribers could add their own third-party software or hardware without carrier interference or blockage.

Up to now, all cell-phone service has been a captive of the “walled garden” of the carrier, from cell-phone selection to services available. I’m not really sure if the subscribers are really pushing for open phones or not. The big carriers have paid lip service to the concept, and I think Google and some other factions are pressuring them into an open position.

Lots of folks think open phones are a good idea. But if you’re going to give your paying customers a good subscriber experience, you do need some control over what features, software, applications, and so on that you offer. Guess who subscribers blame if something doesn’t work right, even if they don’t support or know it?

Anyway, I think the panelists are going along with the open movement reluctantly. I liked what Robert Dotson of T-Mobile said, when he noted that openness still needs some “stewardship” to ensure that apps and software are compatible and reliable to ensure a decent user experience. Someone pointed out that the RIM BlackBerry was definitely not an open system, but who exactly is complaining?

Marco Borreies of Yahoo next introduced some new services, including oneCONNECT and Blueprint, a platform for mobile applications. The keynotes wrapped up with pioneers Craig McCaw and John Stanton, who talked about the early days of cellular radio, which will be 25 years old next month as the first formal cellular call was made in Chicago on October 13, 1983. On that note, happy anniversary on a real technology milestone.

During the remainder of the show’s first day, I had briefings with some interesting companies like Alcatel-Lucent, 4DK, Enfora, and Symbian. Look for my reports on those meetings in the next few days. There will be more tomorrow, unless hurricane Ike threatens my home in Texas. In that case, I may bug out early to avoid spending the weekend and beyond here in San Francisco.