Supercomm returns later this month with its old name but a new focus on broadband applications, services and content, said the show’s managing director, Jan Maciejewski, in an interview. This year’s event will be the first Supercomm managed by Maciejewski and Expocomm Events. Organizers expect the show to take a hit on attendance and exhibit space due to the poor economy, but are aiming for quality, not just quantity, Maciejewski said. Supercomm under its various other names has seen declining attendance and shriveling exhibit space rentals for the past several years (CD Sept 29/08 p1). The 2008 show in Las Vegas had 13,000 attendees, less than half the number that came in 2005, and 180,000 square feet of exhibit space, down from 300,000 in 2004. Maciejewski wouldn’t speculate on attendance for 2009, but said “we are tracking ahead of our expectation at this time.” Exhibit space is “clearly going to be smaller than [it was in] the hey-day of Supercomm,” he said. “The trend in the industry due to the economy … has had an impact on expectations, but if we get the people that we've seen have preregistered, then I think we will have met our expectations,” he said. “We're trying to be realistic. We've very specifically targeted and segmented the market into key buyers [and] key industry leaders. … What I would like to see is the exhibitors going home saying, ‘It may have been smaller due to the economy … but the quality of the people I met while I was there was outstanding.'” Maciejewski’s team studied past Supercomm shows, with an eye on “what’s worked well [and] what we can develop,” and collaborated with exhibitors to pick the right location, content and direction for the show, he said. For example, exhibitors almost universally wanted the show in Chicago, and Maciejewski’s team has already targeted the city for next year’s edition, he said. The 2009 program includes an emphasis on broadband stimulus efforts, with keynote speakers including federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling and CEOs of big service providers, he said: “We're trying to steer [the show] … in a way that is relevant to the market, showcases the very latest, next generation of applications and services, and make it very focused on business.” Supercomm was originally scheduled for the summer, but was delayed primarily to better align it with possible dates for stimulus funding announcements, Maciejewski said. The extra time allowed the team to improve educational programming, as well as better target and attract potential attendees, he said.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Deputy Managing Editor for Privacy Daily. Bender leads a team of journalists and reports on state privacy legislation, rulemaking and litigation. In previous roles at Communications Daily, he covered telecom and internet policy in the states, Congress and at the FCC. He has won awards for his reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW). Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of multiple dystopian sci-fi novels. Keep up to date with Bender by reading his blog and following him on social media including Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn.
ORLANDO, Fla. -- The FCC plans to seek more information on the Universal Service Fund (USF) as part of its development of a national broadband plan, said Jennifer McKee, acting chief of the FCC Wireline Bureau’s telecommunication access policy division. On a panel Tuesday at the CompTel show, she said she expects an FCC public notice on how USF fits into the plan to surface in “the next couple of weeks.”
A federal appeals court on Friday denied a last-minute request by the government seeking a 30-day delay of a district judge’s order to release documents detailing telcos’ lobbying efforts seeking immunity for any involvement in the government’s warrantless surveillance program (CD Sept 28 p10). The government may renew the appeal after “presentation to the district court and the district court’s issuance of an order granting or denying the motion,” said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco denied the government’s motions to postpone and reconsider a Sept. 24 order requiring the documents’ disclosure by Friday. “The Court is not persuaded that it should exercise its discretion to stay its own order pending ‘necessary consultations and deliberations to determine whether to appeal’ the Court’s Order,” White wrote. “The disputed documents were the subject of an order granting preliminary injunction dated April 2008, a subsequent delay in order for Defendants to re-evaluate their position subject to the reformed regulations of the Obama Administration, and the matter has been submitted on the parties’ cross-motions long enough for the Defendants to consider their options regarding a possible appeal in the event their motion was denied.” White said he turned down the request for reconsideration because no new facts, laws or arguments have emerged since the court issued the order. The government defendants “reargue points previously asserted to the Court and, in essence, merely express their disagreement with the Court’s decision.” The Justice Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence responded late Thursday with an emergency motion at the 9th Circuit. The government said the solicitor general needs until Nov. 8 “to conduct the necessary consultations and deliberations regarding the appeal decision.” Without a delay, “the confidentiality of the documents will be irretrievably lost and this Court will be deprived of its ability to review the district court’s order,” it said.
Big long-distance carriers condemned an emergency petition by small rural local-exchange carriers to stay a disputed Iowa Utilities Board order (CD Oct 8 p16) requiring eight rural carriers to refund unauthorized intrastate switched access charges billed to the big carriers. The RLECs want the FCC to put the order on hold until the commission decides on their petition to preempt the board. In opposition filings last week, Qwest, Verizon and Sprint Nextel said the FCC has no authority to intervene, because the Iowa order concerned intrastate traffic, which states have the only jurisdiction over. No FCC decision has upheld the access revenue arrangements between the rural carriers and free conferencing providers, Sprint said. Verizon called the emergency petition “the latest in a series of meritless filings by traffic pumpers” that “engaged in pervasive fraud against” the Iowa board, “the Commission, and interexchange carriers and their customers.” The big carriers say the board’s order is limited to Iowa intrastate traffic, but meanwhile they are citing the decision in similar disputes across the country, said Ross Buntrock, an Arent Fox lawyer representing the RLECs in the FCC proceeding. “They can’t have it both ways.” Buntrock said he hasn’t found anything in the Iowa order clearly stating whether the decision applies to intrastate or interstate traffic or both, and the big carriers haven’t cited anything to that effect, he said.
The FCC tentatively concluded that incumbent local exchange carriers should get more universal service support under the local switching support (LSS) mechanism if they lose a significant number of access line customers. The conclusion came in a rulemaking notice responding to a petition by the Coalition for Equity in Switching Support. It protested an FCC rule that reduces a small incumbent carrier’s LSS support when its number of access lines climbs above a specified threshold but doesn’t increase support if the count falls below the threshold (CD Sept 3 p7). Republican commissioners supported the rulemaking but distanced themselves from the tentative conclusion.
Advocates for the disabled called for FCC mandates or recommendations to spur broadband adoption by people with disabilities. They responded to a commission notice seeking comment on broadband accessibility for people with disabilities, part of the FCC’s development of a national broadband plan. But CTIA, CEA and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) warned that accessibility mandates for wireless and other devices drives up costs and can stifle innovation.
The FCC Wireline Bureau will issue a public notice on special access within 30 days, Chairman Julius Genachowski wrote Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii. “These issues have been pending for several years and I appreciate the understandable frustration of many parties regarding the Commission’s lack of progress in addressing special access issues,” Genachowski wrote on Tuesday.
With review of the Verizon’s access line spinoff to Frontier pending, regulators are watching the escalation of financial woes at FairPoint Communications, government officials said. A year and a half after regulators cleared the spinoff of Verizon’s New England wireline operations to FairPoint, FairPoint is close to filing for bankruptcy (CD Oct 2 p14). Competitive local exchange carriers opposing Verizon’s proposed $8.6 billion sale of 4.8 million access lines to Frontier say the deal looks a lot like Verizon’s $2.7 billion sale of 1.5 million lines to FairPoint. Frontier argues its deal is different. Some regulators agree.
A conference call about net neutrality turned into a heated debate between AT&T and FreeConferenceCall executives concerning the companies’ legal fight over disputed revenue- sharing arrangements between rural local exchange carriers and free conferencing companies. The call was held using a free conference call provider and a northern Minnesota phone number. “Obviously, [we] have different views on how this policy issue should be resolved,” concluded AT&T Vice President Hank Hultquist.
The FCC may soon take a renewed look at the legality of traffic stimulation that rural local exchange carriers are accused of carrying out through arrangements with free- conferencing providers, industry officials said in interviews. They said two recent events have raised the profile at the FCC of what big carriers call traffic pumping: An Iowa Utilities Board decision last month requiring eight rural LECs to refund unauthorized intrastate switched access charges billed to Qwest, AT&T and Sprint, and an AT&T letter saying Google Voice is flouting an FCC ban on traditional telco “self-help” by blocking calls to numbers with high access charges (CD Oct 2 p13).