CEOs Ring Bells, Blow Whistles at NXTcomm

Innovative telecom companies are in the right place, said Seidenberg: “All of the defining experiences of the digital lifestyle -- social networking, media sharing, e- commerce, mobile media -- depend on our advanced networks.” It took many years of “investment and innovation” but the industry “is pushing the envelope on speed,” Seidenberg said.

Motorola CEO Ed Zander told of cellphones starting to see use in Europe as wallets via downloaded credit cards. “Every year you hear, ‘This is the year of convergence, of change'” but this is the year it’s all coming together, said Zander, noting that mobile devices outnumber TVs or PCs. Next year, half of American households will be using on- demand services, he said. Everything is changing in communications and social networking, Zander said. Content products are moving to “spontaneous generators,” letting people produce content at the click of a cellphone camera. Next summer, a product will let people talk to each other on the phone while shooting pictures that both parties can see, he said. “Place shifting” soon will be common, with viewers shifting a TV picture from room to room as they move around their residences. Content distribution is turning into “personacasts,” he said.

Complementing the advanced networks cited by Seidenberg and others, NBC is making waves on the content side, as it plans 2,400 hours of live broadband coverage of the August 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, said Bob Wright, vice chairman of NBC parent General Electric. The problem in this explosion of new technology is content piracy, which has been broadband driven to an extent, Wright said. Until recently, content owners and distributors have not “been in the same boat” but that’s changing as ISPs cooperate more, he said. “It serves no one’s interest for the Internet to be the Wild West,” he said. The best route is a 2-part program including education, in which violators are asked to stop, and if that doesn’t work, getting law enforcement involved, he said.

There’s another problem, said FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein on a later panel. Broadband deployment in the U.S. is lagging, demanding a “national plan with benchmarks” to make sure the U.S. remains competitive, he said. John Kneuer, NTIA administrator, strongly disagreed: “Putting in benchmarks has not been a recipe for investment.” Benchmarks force network companies to “redirect their investment to where Washington wants,” rather than relying on their innovation, he said. “We can do better,” responded Adelstein.

Broadband growth elsewhere isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the U.S., since it encourages “free flow of information,” said David Gross, State Department Coordinator of International Communications & Information Policy. Telecom’s creation of low-cost user devices drives openness abroad, he said. Such devices can be used to “show the world” if a country behaves represssively, said Kneuer. The challenge is to “make sure countries don’t use such technology to close down information,” Gross said.

Asked to project two years out, Adelstein said he'd like to close broadband gaps in the U.S. through tax credits and universal service subsidies. The Universal Service Fund now can fund only voice service but “voice is just an application over broadband,” Adelstein said. Kneuer said people will look back at the debate over broadband access as “anachronistic” because the answer will be a “targeted approach… using the innovation that’s in this room,” meaning NXTcomm participants. Gross said technology itself fills holes in service. Zander’s example of using a cellphone for a wallet already goes on in Africa, “partly because they don’t have the infrastructure there for banking,” he said.

Adelstein and Kneuer agreed the 700 MHz auction will have a significant impact worldwide because, in Kneuer’s phrase, it’s a “huge green field” of spectrum capable of extremely good propagation. In the same way that new technology gets shown on the NXTcomm floor, the auction brings “a game changing opportunity,” said Kneuer. Adelstein said he'd like to see another national competitor emerge for the auction but he wasn’t sure if that would happen. -- Edie Herman

NXTcomm Notebook…

Guarding customer privacy is a continual balancing act, industry and government officials said on a NXTcomm panel. A recent FCC order aimed at fighting pretexting “tries to strike a balance” by moving to protect consumers but not overburden carriers, said John Hunter, aide to FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell. Carriers need flexibility if they are to guard customers without sacrificing service, he said. “There’s a balance” between protecting consumers’ information while enabling carriers to provide services consumers want, said Scott Deutchman, aide to FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. “That’s what we struggled with in the CPNI order. One of the most difficult issues was opting in and opting out,” he said. The FCC found that balance by requiring an opt-in for joint ventures, but not for companies’ own affiliates because companies made a “good case” for retaining an opt-out there. “Customers own their personal information and should have a right to opt in,” Deutchman said. With a December 8 deadline expected for new FCC CPNI rules, carriers may have to press to change their back room processes, said Trey Judy, regulatory affairs director of CT Communications, a telecom service provider. “Many don’t have their ducks in a row,” he said: “I can’t overemphasize training.” CT, which tried to train staff units in order of priority, discovered everyone, including marketing, customer service, installers, billing, and others, needed it, since nearly everyone handles sensitive data in some way, Judy said.

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AT&T’s CEO, on the job 2 weeks, jazzed up his NXTcomm keynote by demonstrating a new service that lets cell phone callers send live, full-motion videos to recipients. Randall Stephenson said “Video Share,” introduced in Atlanta, Dallas and San Antonio, is set for release elsewhere in late July. It requires Video Share-capable phones and works only on AT&T’s 3G network. Stephenson expects the service to expand beyond wireless screens to other media such as TC and PCs, he said. As Stephenson talked shared videos flashed on a screen above him, depicting events ranging from a graduation ceremony to a toddler at meal time.