Front Page: SUPERCOMM: Still On the A-List

Telecom trade shows aren't anything like those in the bubble years. Attendance is down from its peak and there are few bells and whistles. Don't expect to see David Letterman or Bruce Springsteen entertain, and, remember, there is no such thing as a free lunch -- literally.

But, if a telephone or cable company attends only a few shows a year, the monster convention SUPERCOMM is probably on the list. At the Georgia World Congress Center, techies, government officials, international regulators, investors and corporations from around the globe will converge for SUPERCOMM 2003.

The show begins Sunday, June 1, but the action doesn't kick into full gear until Tuesday morning. The exhibits will open following an address by AT&T Chairman and CEO Dave Dorman.

Last year some 37,000 people from 106 countries made an appearance at SUPERCOMM to network, check out the latest and greatest technology and get the skinny on other sweeping developments related to that all-encompassing noun: infrastructure.

"There aren't too many shows today for carriers" to evaluate "all the technologies in one place," says Daniel Briere, chief executive of research at consulting firm TeleChoice Inc.

SUPERCOMM, analysts say, is the place.

In early April, SUPERCOMM General Manager Jack Chalden told xchange it was too early to say how many people would attend because the majority of attendees pre-register nearer to the date of the show. However, there is one good sign, he says, pre-registration indicates representatives from at least 100 countries plan to attend. "We think we will be close to the same numbers of last year," Chalden says, but "I wouldn't want to be quoted as saying it's a slam dunk."

Chris Nicoll, vice president of telecom infrastructure for Current Analysis, has been going to SUPERCOMM for at least a decade. He says he expects attendance to be down 25 percent because "there are just fewer people in the industry overall."

However, he says those who do make an appearance will be the decisionmakers, a good sign for exhibitors showcasing their wares. Says the analyst: "We have gotten rid of the folks who are there, who are walking around and aren't really the buyers."

A preliminary count on SUPERCOMM's Web site showed 504 exhibitors listed for this year.

Technologies expected to be front and center at SUPERCOMM include Wi-Fi, fixed wireless, Ethernet, cable telephony, technology geared for the edge of the network and video on demand tailored for rural telephone companies. Briere predicts there will be more security offers designed to improve the reliability of a network in the event of an outage or catastrophe, and technology geared to extend secure data capabilities to remote devices, such as a cell phone or personal digital assistant. Nicoll predicts a spike in interoperability demonstrations at the show and vendors to unveil more mature technologies that companies have worked to refine.

Briere says it is notable that, as of press time, no carriers are exhibiting -- not even their wholesale parts. He also says it is interesting that Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is absent given "their Cisco lawsuit and such. They've said they want in on the U.S. market." In January Cisco Systems Inc. filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court against Huawei and subsidiaries Huawei America Inc. and FutureWei Technologies, alleging Huawei unlawfully copied Cisco's intellectual property. Briere also expressed surprise that Samsung is not exhibiting.

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines