Still Two Shows For Telecom Industry

Globalcomm returns to Chicago in 2007, while TelecomNext hits Vegas

By Margo McCall -- Tradeshow Week, 6/19/2006

It looks like telecom exhibitors will have to display their wares at two competing tradeshows again next year, because the Telecommunications Industry Assn.'s Globalcomm and USTelecom's TelecomNext are both scheduled to return.

The TIA, which represents telecom equipment vendors, and USTelecom, an association for telecom carriers, jointly produced the Tradeshow Week 200-ranked Supercomm for nearly two decades. The groups parted ways and opted to launch their own shows after the final Supercomm in 2005.

TIA's inaugural Globalcomm, held June 4–8 at Chicago's McCormick Place, beat projections slightly with a 203,000 net square foot showfloor with 502 exhibitors. Attendance hit 17,200, according to preliminary estimates for the audited show. That was below the 20,000 forecast, but enough to satisfy organizers.

"That's not bad at all," said Matt Flanigan, president of TIA, which previously ran Supercomm's show operations. "We're pleased, but more importantly, the exhibitors on the showfloor are very pleased."

Flanigan said Globalcomm would return to Chicago in 2007, and already has 140,000 net sq. ft. of space sold, but could relocate to another city in future years. "Chicago's been a great city. It's a good international hub. The hotels have done an excellent job in holding prices down," he said.

One thing that won't be the same next year are the Monday-through-Wednesday exhibition days, starting a day earlier than the exhibits at Supercomm, whose McCormick Place dates Globalcomm inherited. The new pattern was blamed for slow traffic on Monday, when many attendees were still flying into town.

Showfloor traffic was so slow that it prompted a Telephony magazine editor to write in her blog, "The breakup of Supercomm is living up to all the dire predictions. The Golden Goose is dead. In the place of one good tradeshow, we now have two bad ones."

That same editor observed that the Globalcomm floor came "bubbling to life" on Tuesday after being a "virtual ghost town" on Monday.

Flanigan said attendees hailed from 109 countries, giving Globalcomm "a truly global feel." But local enterprise buyers turned out too, thanks, in part, to free transportation provided by Crain's Chicago Business.

An AT&T executive provided a keynote address, but Flanigan acknowledged that Verizon Communications, BellSouth and other USTelecom members largely stayed away.

"I think that's their loss. There were lots of new product deployments and lots of enterprise customers. They missed all those opportunities," he said.

Globalcomm featured 15 partner conferences. Although the 200-exhibitor OSP Expo collocated with Globalcomm this year, next year the event will move to San Jose, Calif.

The unaudited TelecomNext, held at Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay Convention Center March 19–23, drew 10,000 buyers and 270 exhibitors by USTelecom's estimation. Although exhibitors mostly expressed satisfaction with attendee quality, some complained that there could have been more.

USTelecom President Walter McCormick said the show would return to Las Vegas in 2007, in a slightly larger configuration at the Sands Expo & Convention Center.

McCormick said it was never his association's intent to create a replacement event for Supercomm. Rather, TelecomNext was intended to highlight emerging markets for its association members.

"We never saw TelecomNext as being in a duel with Globalcomm. With TelecomNext, we sought to build an entirely new event that would be about the emerging industry, where the business and technology of communications and entertainment meet," he said.

USTelecom organizers also stressed buyer quality over quantity. For example, nearly three-quarters of buying delegations at the show were led by a C-level executive, according to McCormick.