SUPERCOMM: What's old is new again

SUPERCOMM is back, or at least it will be next June in Chicago. The Telecommunications Industry Association and USTelecom last week took another sharp turn in their colorful history of producing this event, deciding after two years of calling their show NXTcomm that perhaps what's super is better than what's next. But, it won't be the old SUPERCOMM, of course. It will be a brand new one, reflecting the radical transformation of the traditional telecom industry in recent years from wireline, narrowband and voice-centric, to wireless, broadband and data-and-video-centric.

That's also what NXTcomm was supposed be all about, but for some people, the NXTcomm identity never quite became second nature. Some attendees could be overheard even this year calling the show SUPERCOMM, or cracking jokes about how maybe the name had changed again in the last 30 seconds. Maybe the NXTcomm identity wasn't given enough time. Maybe it was cursed by the poor timing and location of this year's show--June in Las Vegas.

As show organizers get to work on re-casting SUPERCOMM in a new light (an effort which starts today with an informational webinar [1]), they have much work ahead of them. U.S. and international events that originated in the wireless industry have moved to center stage in the last few years, and throngs of event companies and media companies (such as FierceMarkets and others) continue to flood the annual event schedule with conferences of all kinds.

I have no doubt that SUPERCOMM can be refreshed into a dynamic new event with a familiar name. Whether that is enough to make this event the center of the industry's trade show calendar again remains to be seen. In a much consolidated industry being affected by growing macro-economic pressures, it would not be surprising if the service providers and vendors that are considering attending this show and others, eventually decide that they have bigger concerns.

-Dan [2]