Q&A: TIA’s Grant Seiffert on a new event, new directions

Grant Seiffert joined the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) in 1996, and has seen many of the industry’s more recent ups and downs. Now, as TIA president, Seiffert is shepherding the TIA into a new age highlighted by the debut of a new TIA event this May 17-20 in Dallas, TIA 2011: Inside the Network (disclosure: Connected Planet is a media partner with TIA at the event).

We talked with Seiffert about building the new event, the shadow cast by the former Supercomm show and the key challenges and opportunities facing the industry today.

Connected Planet: How important is it that there’s an annual event and exhibition for the U.S. telecom industry? What need does it serve in today’s industry?

Seiffert: As you know, TIA is a trade association representing the equipment vendor community. We view the event as basically an annual meeting place for the industry. When Supercomm went away, TIA as an association felt strongly we still needed that meeting place. We asked our membership and their answer was a strong ‘yes.’ The time we spend [next month] in Dallas is combined with other services including education, a virtual platform and certainly an exhibition that allows our members to sell their wares to their customers.

This is not Supercomm. It will never be Supercomm. It is a TIA branded event, Inside the Network. We chose the network [as the focus]; we are the infrastructure – our members are the developers, suppliers and innovators of the network. We’re excited about the program we put together.

Connected Planet: What role do in-person events play in an age of online, webinars, virtual events, etc? How is this show different than past events?

Seiffert: We’re jumping into that virtual world with our digital marketplace to provide a virtual experience for those who cannot attend or even those who do attend but want more. We can extend the opportunity for many months. Ultimately, we feel you can never get away from that physical meeting, the handshake-and-sign-here physical presence. But all the [event’s] tracks and keynotes will be captured through our TIA Now digital site. We’re really trying to reflect what our members are doing in the marketplace.

Connected Planet: What are the major themes the event will focus on? Are there key ideas or topics that are particularly relevant for service providers today?

Seiffert: From the traditional TIA standpoint there are issues like converged networks and mobile backhaul issues that the industry is challenged with. Those are the easy ones to point your finger at, and there’s a lot of interest. Smart grid and sustainability issues are also quite important. It’s not only a developing market for our members but there are important energy policy issues. And our [manufacturer] members are also saying they need to reduce their energy costs by 20, 30, 40 percent over time.

Connected Planet: From a big-picture perspective, how would you characterize the industry as we head into this May’s event? What are the opportunities, what are the challenges?

Seiffert: TIA is a pure reflection of what’s going on for our membership. We suffered like our members did through the recession – we had less people attending events and meetings and developing standards. But it’s returning nicely; [telecom] is one of the few parts of the economy that is growing. We always said through the recession that it will be the information technology industry that helps parts of the economy recover. The overall industry is very positive and cautiously optimistic. [TIA] represents 3.5 million employees and jobs in the U.S. marketplace, that’s a significant workforce, and they are innovating every day.

Connected Planet: TIA has a lot on its policy plate right now, and at TIA 2011 will be hosting its Spring Policy Summit. Can you summarize priorities right now and sort out what is over-hyped and what are the real issues providers should be paying close attention to from a policy perspective?

Seiffert: Spectrum, we have got to act on. I was just at the White House in a briefing with the chairman of the FCC [Julius Genachowski] and White House economic advisors. Congress has to legislate on and give the FCC authority to act on incentive [spectrum] auctions. Every day that goes by that we’re not looking at future spectrum allocations impacts the competitiveness and innovation of our members, and ultimately impacts the consumer.

As a country, we need to prioritize our long-term [research and development] strategy. We do not spend enough long-term research dollars as we used to do with Bell Labs. There are 12 Bell Labs [equivalents] sitting in China and India competing with us right now. Our members are not rewarded for making long-term investments; Wall Street hammers them every thirty days.

Connected Planet: Can you share with us your outlook on how the show is doing a litte more than a month out? What should exhibitors and attendees expect?

Seiffert: TIA is excited to launch a new event. You don’t hear us use the word “show” a lot. We’ll have an exhibit component but if we use the word “show” we get painted with the Supercomm brush. Our goal is to have 3000 attendees and we believe we are delivering a top notch education program with the leadership of our industry talking to our membership about future challenges. We’ll have Randall Stephenson from AT&T, Tony Melone from Verizon [as keynoters], and we’re bringing in the FCC Chairman and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. So it’s a very strong lineup. We hope our members can take advantage to come and learn. It’s a first-time event but we’ve put a lot of things together that both our members and their customers can take advantage of and ultimately this is where our mission in life is: to help our members do business and grow their business. We think we’ll have the content and education to help our members do that.