The new Supercomm

It looks like the USTelecom and TIA have come to their senses. After two years of trying to go it alone with separate trade shows — TelecomNext and Globalcomm — they're reuniting the event into Supercomm.

Or not. Instead it's called NXTcomm, and both organizations insist it's a complete departure from their previous efforts, either independently or together. Nevermind that the show is in the exact same June timeframe as Supercomm in previous years, as well as last year's Globalcomm.

It seems as if a couple of industry organizations are trying awfully hard to avoid admitting they made a mistake. Squabbling aside, you do have to give USTelecom and TIA some credit, though. They may not be acknowledging what everyone in the industry knows — that the separate shows bombed — but they're correcting their mistake, and it looks like they're actually taking measures to make the new Supercomm better than the old.

TIA and USTelecom will share the conference 50/50, and TIA won't be running the show. Instead, the two are creating a joint corporation with the stated intent of doing away with sales-floor atmosphere of old and make it an event focused on technology and innovation.

Instead of just attracting equipment vendors and their customers, the new NXTComm is angling for a broader base: entertainment and media companies, applications developers and Internet merchants — the people driving the traffic over the networks TIA and USTelecom members are building. It's a welcome change. Though splitting up Supercomm was a disaster, letting Supercomm remain in its old format might have been the bigger mistake. Supercomm was never a bad conference, but with technology-specific shows like CTIA and VON drawing away more and more of the event's clientele, it would only have been matter of time before Supercomm needed rejuvenation.

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