Goods News, Bad News and No News

It’s late October as I’m writing this, which means I just got off the Supercomm train. It was a slow train, by many accounts, but it’s still chugging along.

Attendee numbers weren’t available at press time, but many exhibitors commented on the relatively small show floor and light traffic, although at least one vendor noted the high quality of traffic. In any case, it was another opportunity for the industry to gather and talk shop.

Supercomm, as you may recall, justified its postponement of the show due to the broadband stimulus. Delaying the event until October, Supercomm officials announced earlier this year, would allow the industry to get a better handle on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act legislation and the broadband stimulus program that came out of it. But while the FCC (News - Alert) did issue the rules for the first round broadband stimulus program since news broke about the Supercomm postponement, as an industry we really didn’t have much more insight into the broadband stimulus as of the October show, given the federal government hadn’t announced first round stimulus funding winners as of that time. (The first round winners were expected to be announced as early as November.)

As a result, much of the discussion at Supercomm about both the broadband stimulus and the National Broadband Plan, which the FCC is expected to issue in February, was speculation. Even Supercomm keynoter Aneesh Chopra, CTO of the U.S. and associate director for technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, didn’t have much to say about the efforts. Matt Niehaus, partner of Battery Ventures, and a panelist on Supercomm’s “Private Investment: The Backbone of Broadband Deployment,” quite rightly noted at Supercomm that everyone is holding their collective breath until the first stimulus awards are announced.

But there was some interesting discussion around regulation. Niehaus and keynoter John T. Stankey, president and CEO of AT&T Operations, both mentioned that creating new competition should not be among the goals of the broadband stimulus or the National Broadband Plan, saying that to open the market to more competition will only weaken the industry.

“Regulation should understand that there’s plenty of competition in the market today,” Stankey said in his Thursday speech.

Another notable comment that came out of the above-mentioned panel was Tom Tauke’s mention that there appears to be a limited window of opportunity (that window being about a year by his watch) for the federal government to resolve Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation reform. The National Broadband Plan would be a good document to set guidelines for such reform, which could be detailed in the wake of the plan’s unveiling in February, he said.

Beyond regulatory discussions, other prevalent themes in sessions and exhibitor news included Ethernet-based mobile backhaul, how to efficiently bridge the gap between legacy and next-generation networks and services, the migration to 100gig optics, and the importance of network and service monitoring and management.

We also saw the rise of a hot new acronym, called H1N1, at this year’s Supercomm. As you may have noticed, not as many folks were offering handshakes this year as in the past (probably not a bad idea), and Purell was in abundant supply atop the escalators and in exhibitor meeting rooms.

Speaking of hands, we didn’t hear as much hand-wringing over the economy at this event. So that’s something we can all feel good about. IT

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