New name, different game

Former Bell companies probably won't be out in force at the first Globalcomm tradeshow, and wireless and enterprise angles promise to give Supercomm's successor a flavor all its own. Here's a scouting report from our staff.

A DIVERSITY OF VOICES

This year's Globalcomm show will have a distinctly different cast from previous shows held in Chicago at this time of year.

Where Bell company executives dominated the Supercomm speaker list in past years, diversity is the key this year as international service providers, competitive service providers, wireless carriers, enterprise executives and other technology players will be rubbing elbows at McCormick Place. Globalcomm, which commences June 5, has opened its doors to a wider variety of industry voices, as characterized by its opening keynote, which features Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO of Research In Motion, the company that produced the addictive BlackBerry data devices.

Among key events at Globalcomm is an executive summit with the Internet Security Alliance, which will draw enterprise executives together with information officers from major cities to address information security compliance and disaster preparation.

Also featured are major CLECs, including Broadwing, Covad Communications, McLeod Communications and XO Communications, as well as influencers from the voice-over-IP community, including Jeff Pulver.

Of the Bells, only AT&T is providing major executives for the show. Spokespeople for both BellSouth and Verizon indicated they are not supporting Globalcomm, having used their resources for the earlier TelecomNext show.

Much of the programming is aimed at enterprise customers, as Globalcomm works to expand its reach beyond service providers. But the show retains its prominence among service providers on a global basis, attracting leading players including BT, France Telecom, Telecom Italia and major Asian companies.
— Carol Wilson

AN OSS OFFENSIVE

Operations support system companies already had their time in the spotlight this spring with TeleStrategies' Billing World & OSS event in Miami and the TeleManagement Forum's big show two weeks later in Nice, France. However, the leaders in this sector have been going on the offense the last couple of quarters. They aren't likely to let their momentum ebb, so look for leading operations support system companies, even if they aren't exhibiting, to be talking deployments — that is, if they're not too preoccupied with talking about the companies they just bought or what companies just bought them. This sector will be consolidating, no doubt about it.

The same may hold true for the test and measurement market. Its consolidation won't stop with JDSU's acquisition of Acterna nor Anritsu's acquisition of NetTest. However, test companies will all be there in one form or another, either in their own booths or in group settings. Test companies will be participating in events such as the one taking place in the Interoperability Pavilion, a new feature this year supported by the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab. If you're tired of hearing marketing pitches and promises about tomorrow, this would be a good place to see what companies are actually doing to enable the services you are probably looking to deploy some day.

If the test company you're looking for isn't participating in the UNH demo, then it's likely they can be found in one of the many other demonstrations being offered by organizations such as the Metro Ethernet Forum, the Multiservice Forum, the Optical Internetworking Forum, the IMS Forum, the Multimedia over Coax Alliance, the SIP Forum, the DSL Forum or the MPLS and Frame Relay Alliance under the banner of the InterOperability in Action area.
— Tim McElligott

WIRELESS MOVES UPFRONT

For a conference that is not known for a huge wireless presence, Globalcomm is pulling out all of the stops this June, devoting the entire first day of the show to wireless.

Kicking off the conference is perhaps one of the most controversial companies in wireless of late. Research in Motion's Mike Lazaridis will likely discuss the future of wireless push e-mail, perhaps the hottest application in wireless data these days. What the audience will want to hear, though, is about RIM's battle with NTP, which settled last month for $612.5 million. RIM and NTP brought the push e-mail industry practically to a shutdown in their protracted legal fight, with NTP bandying about threats of an injunction against RIM's BlackBerry, and both sides refusing to reach an agreement until the 11th hour. RIM's close call with complete service interruption and the massive payout it forked over are not subjects the company likes to dwell on, however, so expect Lazaridis to relegate its trials to the past (though RIM now faces another lawsuit from Visto — see story on page 12).

The mid-day keynote panel will be a collection of wireless carriers, including the two new boutique mobile virtual network operators to hit the market, Mobile ESPN General Manager Manish Jha and Aaron Quick, Amp'd Mobile's head of sports content. Both companies are revving up their unique business strategies, each with only three months of live service behind them (see cover story on page 34). The rest of the industry is watching closely to see if their very targeted segmentation of the market will work out in the long run. Joining them on the panel is Tom Murphy, Sprint marketing vice president, and Weston Henderek, Current Analysis senior analyst.

The day will conclude with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who may discuss spectrum issues among other topics, and Orange CEO Sanjiv Ahuja, who will bring the international carrier's perspective to the conference.

Although the keynotes will be very wireless carrier- and application-centric, the exhibit floor is likely to take on a much different flavor. Most of the major vendors' wireless infrastructure divisions will be staying home, but enterprise networking, fixed/mobile convergence and IP multimedia subsystem technologies will be well-represented. And, who could forget about WiMAX technology?
— Kevin Fitchard

CASTING FOR CAPACITY

At the industry's biggest annual trade show, new products and mints have something in common: They're available in almost every booth but not enough people take advantage of them.

To the extent that wireline equipment vendors introduce new products at Globalcomm, it's a fair bet that many of them will be aimed at increasing capacity needs just about everywhere in the network. (Foundry Networks released its new big core router in advance of the show, for example, trying to get some attention before the real din begins.)

Even products that were initially introduced as scaled-down alternatives for the low end of the market will likely be joined by (or transformed into) bulkier versions with enough muscle to handle traffic growth from multimedia applications. Access enthusiasts will no doubt be looking to see whether Tellabs will formally unveil its Gigabit passive optical networking platform at the show, given that the vendor has promised its availability in the second half of this year.

Juniper, which has lost some ground to Alcatel recently in the edge networking equipment market, has promised a new product to help its sales in the second half of the year. It's unknown if the vendor might pick Globalcomm to unveil that new gear, and it's not clear if that gear might be an answer to analysts' repeated calls for the company to add more Ethernet functionality to its portfolio.

As carrier Ethernet standards are progressing, expect to see plenty of carrier Ethernet gear on display, many hailed as certified by the Metro Ethernet Forum. And it's a fair bet vendors will be demonstrating the interoperability of their carrier Ethernet gear with others'. If only they demonstrated the use of those mints with as much zeal.
— Ed Gubbins