Why was our panel of experts so down on individuals whose main activity is in mobile and wireless? Perhaps it's simply that other areas - open source, IT outsourcing/offshoring, the rise of Asia and of course all things Google - were more compelling.

Or could it be that, after years of hype and an eventual burst bubble, we take communications for granted? A few names on the top 50 list this year managed to buck the trend, all from slightly different directions.

To be a telco - or cellco, in mobile - is by its very nature to be parochial. Of course, in this sense parochial can stretch thousands of miles and span hundreds of millions of people. Nevertheless, past years have shown us that for someone in charge of an operator to make it on this elite list, they need one of two things.

The first is true innovation. Previously, NTT DoCoMo's Keiji Tachikawa made appearances as the man at the vanguard of a mobile data revolution being pioneered in Japan. He's out of the frame now and mobile data the norm.

Second, you need reach, something beyond parochialism. No fixed line telco has it but Vodafone, now led by CEO Arun Sarin, comes closest of all operators. Indeed, Sarin in some ways personifies universal reach: Indian by birth, American by career, British by HQ, global in outlook. But he only gets a placing at 42, down on previous years' assessments.

You could say this is about a reaction to traditional big corporate tech - the list in its entirety, albeit future-looking, throws up many an upstart at the expense of a better-known name. But the presence of Motorola CEO Ed Zander at 10 goes against that reasoning.

Rivals at Nokia don't make this year's list, quite possibly because Jorma Ollila will soon be replaced in that company's hot seat, and while the overall head of Samsung Electronics is right up there in the top 10, Zander was cited for a comeback in devices. Certainly Motorola, with 2005 the year of the slimline Razr and now the iTunes hybrid Rokr, is a desirable brand in mobile. How much of that is down to Zander is hard to say but there's also a feeling that here we have someone who could be successful almost anywhere - a true quality for inclusion in this poll.

In terms of pure tech, it's closer to home that we must look. Last year threw up Bristol University's Joe McGeehan, a wireless innovator and also Toshiba Labs MD, as a wireless wild card. And David Levin, until this year CEO at smart phone OS venture Symbian, was for several years a UK-based stalwart. This time we turn to the CEOs of Cambridge Silicon Radio and The Cloud.

CSR is known as the company behind more Bluetooth chips worldwide than any other. A successful float last year showed us the value of that. But few know of silicon veteran John Hodgson, that company's boss. He's in at 27 - only two places below Intel's Paul Otellini - and can arguably be said to be helping drive a lot of wireless communications globally.

The Cloud is also more than British in outlook. It sells wholesale Wi-Fi connectivity in a number of countries and is the brainchild of George Polk. As we point out in Polk's biog, for someone who came in at 16 he stimulated a lot of debate. Could it be that this is someone who has been pioneering in wireless and will continue to be so? The CV suggests as much.

But not everyone was convinced. "What's he doing that's so clever? To me Wi-Fi is like saying Ethernet. I mean, so what?" said one of our panellists.

Indeed, for the immense accomplishments of these individuals, there seems to be a feeling that wireless is simply part of the plumbing now. Sure, there are plenty of people in the top 50 doing interesting things over wireless networks and devices, and if we extend our grouping to communications more broadly we get to include everyone's favourite disruptive individual - Skype's Niklas Zennström at number four. Or should that be eBay's Zennström?

But let's save VoIP for another article and make a bet that in years to come we might just get the plumbing appreciated again. Wireless is fast evolving and it is possible that a single person will get to turn business models on their heads, to set future agendas.