Sooooo, about that Verizon Wireless press event at CTIA. It was for a Latino-focused mobile network that Verizon has partnered with Jennifer Lopez to launch – it’s called Viva Movil. It was easily one of the more embarrassing and hilarious (for the wrong reasons) press events I have seen in my 3 or 4 years in this business. J-Lo stood on stage after a quick intro, not even hiding the fact that she was ill-prepared and had to turn her head from teleprompter to teleprompter during her drawn out speech over a company that she apparently cares so much for. There was even a moment where she lost track of a question she was attempting to answer, and instead took to explaining how fun it was to pick out colors and fonts for stores. Marni Walden, Verizon’s COO, probably made matters worse though, by starting off the event telling the press in attendance that they wouldn’t have invited them there unless it was for a “big announcement” and that they would have news to Tweet about afterwards. She wasn’t lying, there is plenty to Tweet about. 

CTIA 2013 is happening this week in Las Vegas and Tim is there in attendance for one reason, because Verizon scheduled a press event to take place, their first in quite some time. We have no idea what to expect once they take the stage, but you can probably think of a few good reasons. Will it be network related? Is their initial 4G LTE rollout complete? Will VoLTE make its first appearance? Or will we finally see the Verizon-branded HTC One? It could be a combination of all of those things for all we know. Verizon has been tight-lipped on this one, so stick with us during our live blog to see what happens.

The event kicks off at 11:00AM Pacific (2:00PM Eastern).

Taking place in Las Vegas this week is CTIA, another annual mobile/tech industry conference much like CES that takes place in January. Some well-known names are attending this year’s meetup, companies such as HTC, NVIDIA, LG and Verizon are all in attendance. Demoing their Tegra 4i processor with built in i500 LTE modem is Santa Clara’s NVIDIA, showing the industry that thanks to an update, their chip is capable of flying through large amounts of data in no time at all. 

Verizon dropped a “save the date” into our inbox this afternoon, asking that we reserve some time on May 22 at CTIA for a “special announcement” from COO Marni Walden. We were actually planning on skipping CTIA this year as the wireless tech conference has become a waste of time over the last two years, but this certainly means we’ll be in attendance. The question is, “What kind of announcement are they going to make?”

In somewhat of an expected move, CTIA The Wireless Association, has announced that they will move away from their 2-event yearly mobile series of events in 2014 and instead create one “super” mobile show to kick off the Fall season. In the past, and in 2013 as well, CTIA has always thrown two mobile events – one in the spring and another enterprise-focused event in the Fall. With both shows steadily dying over the last two years, CTIA’s focus will change somewhat for 2014 and onward. 

When I saw that CTIA had booked the 4 CEOs from the top 4 U.S. carriers to get on stage and banter about the industry, I immediately penciled it into my schedule. They ran a similar keynote last year, but with the AT&T and T-Mobile merger still up in the air at the point, it was missing T-Mo’s CEO. With that merger now squashed, this will be the first time that all 4 will gather. It’s moderated, but it should make for some entertaining commentary.

This week, CTIA Wireless 2012 is poppin’ off in New Orleans and we are here to cover anything major that comes out of it. Think of this wireless show as a mini-CES that focuses on mobile only, rather than the TV, computer stuff and overwhelming amounts of spam products. It should be a decent show, with Verizon already announcing the DROID Incredible 4G LTE – a device that we should have our hands on before too long. Samsung, HTC, Qualcomm and most of the other players you have grown accustomed to will also be around in some capacity, showing off their latest products. Galaxy SIII in the building? We’ll see.

Keynotes begin tomorrow morning to open up the event, followed by an afternoon session that should be a blast. We get the CEOs of Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint all on stage together to banter about the industry, LTE and more. Wednesday’s keynote includes Spotify, Visa , EA and Firefox – Thursday’s is former President Bill Clinton.

The press events kick off this afternoon, so don’t be surprised if the press releases start trickling out this evening. Again, if it’s big, we will try to bring it your way. In between the oysters, po boys and local brews, of course.

We sat down with the folks at QuickOffice yesterday at CTIA to preview the newest version of the tablet and smartphone app dubbed version 5.0. It’s a pretty massive upgrade that introduces a variety of features for the business travel in all of us.

Along with some UI tweaks that add to the polish, QuickOffice is including a new sharing feature. That’s right, you will be able to share your work with colleagues on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. They also tossed in some additional cloud services to help round out their portfolio – most notably are Evernote and Catch.

They told us to expect the update in mid-November at the same prices you are seeing right now.  More pictures after the break.