SUPERCOMM '98: The Path to Real-World Solutions
Like the ancient Greek agora, SUPERCOMM '98 will be a central marketplace of both wares and ideas. Indeed, from June 7 to 11, the 45,000 communications professionals assembling at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta will feel that they are at the vortex of everything happening in their field. And theirs is an industry literally changing more rapidly than daily headlines posted on the Web.
SUPERCOMM is a logical response to a situation in which information is flowing at unprecedented speed -- too quickly to be ferreted out of nooks and crannies. Life in the telecom fast lane demands bringing every segment of communications and information technology under one roof and compressing its exposure into a few intensive days. SUPERCOMM is the only annual event in the world that accomplishes this feat. Consequently, its scale alone can create a comprehensive understanding of an industry tossed among many multiplying alternatives.
Appropriately, the theme of this year's event is "The Path to Real-World Solutions." Implicit is the assumption that, while options may be numerous, a customer-driven marketplace will choose which possibilities become realities. For the participants from more than 90 countries, SUPERCOMM has thus become a preparing ground for the future of their organizations and careers. Through a unique diversity of viewpoints combined with exhibits, workshops, and informal networking, these attendees will have the panoramic background through which they can clarify their own perspectives.
The purpose of this article is to give readers of IEEE Communications Magazine a sense of this accelerated learning experience. Through some of this year's principal speakers, it attempts to offer a window on key varying trends and options. SUPERCOMM's cosponsors -- the United States Telephone Association (USTA) and Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) -- have, in fact, gathered an "all-star cast" of prognosticators and leaders, corporate chiefs and emerging entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers.
The speakers highlighted in the present article constitute only a fraction of the vantage points receiving exposure in Atlanta. The IEEE Communications Society along with the International Communications Association (ICA), International Engineering Consortium (IEC), and SUPERCOMM will offer more than 250 educational sessions featuring 850 speakers. The topics covered represent a correspondingly wide range.
When will broadband capabilities begin to serve a mass market, and what technologies will enable the expansion in bandwidth? Will voice communications via the Internet remove the need for "structured networks," such as those maintained by traditional providers of telephone service? When will true competition reign in the local exchange and long distance arenas? Will wireless be able to capitalize on delays in telecommunications reform to seize the high ground in residential service? And will a third generation of wireless technology put Internet access snugly in the palm of your hand? Will the new laser-linked satellite communications networks go beyond business travelers and finally establish the long-awaited global village?
Hopefully for participants, a path into the future will emerge, a sense of which technologies and companies will indeed provide "real-world solutions."
A Global Event with Worldwide Implications
Over the years, SUPERCOMM and its antecedents have increasingly evolved from regional American "hotel trade shows" where U.S. telephony providers met with their suppliers into a truly international venue.
It is apt that the first major speaker will share a seasoned global outlook with his audience. On the afternoon of Sunday, June 7, Dr. Hisashi Kaneko, president, NEC Corporation, will give the Global Opening Address. A 34-year veteran of the industry who joined NEC in 1956, Dr. Kaneko is one of the company's most experienced executives in digital technologies and transmission.
From his office in Japan, Dr. Kaneko affirms the importance of telecommunications as an essential aspect of nation building: "Having an advanced telecommunications or information infrastructure is certainly a critical factor for ensuring a nation's economic growth and for strengthening long-term competitive advantage."
With reference to the Asia Pacific region's so-called tigers and tiger cubs weathering a complex currency crisis, he adds, "Countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China understand this, and they are promoting advanced information infrastructure programs with the leadership of the government and the private sector. Although current economic difficulties may slow the pace of this modernization temporarily, I believe that the long-term outlook remains very promising."
NEC has long promoted what they call "computers and communications," which has similarly been a major sub-theme of SUPERCOMM since its inception.
Asked what he envisions as the most important event in computers and communications in the first 10 years of the 21st century, Dr. Kaneko replies: "From a managerial viewpoint, I think that the rapid technology innovation in computers and communications will lead to a drastic change in current business practices and structure. Therefore, the first decade of the 21st century will bring major challenges for global corporations in how to adopt to this new environment, and how to effectively leverage new technology toward building competitive advantage. I think that information technology companies including NEC, who are leading in both the development and implementation of information technology, will play a critical role in helping global businesses overcome these challenges."
What will this "drastic change in business practices and structure" look like? On the following day, June 8, attendees will receive a glimpse from two of the notable individuals of our time. One presenter, Dr. Arno Penzias, envisions small central organizations with affiliated employees away from the office and close to their customers. His co-keynoter, House Speaker New Gingrich, is busy at work creating a new legal framework that will allow the enabling electronics for this decentralization to function smoothly.
Co-Keynoters: A Nobel Prize Winner and Mr. Speaker
In the mid-1960s, Dr. Arno Penzias and a colleague at Bell Labs, while trying to rid their radio antenna of microwave noise, made a landmark discovery: the cosmic background radiation that gave the first empirical credence to the "Big Bang" theory of creation. In 1978 Dr. Penzias received the Nobel Prize for his breakthrough. Now 20 years later, as vice president and chief scientist of Bell Labs Innovations at Lucent Technologies, he will serve as co-keynoter of a joint plenary session, sponsored by ICC/ICA/ SUPERCOMM, in which he will look ahead into future decades.
Dr. Penzias brings a "tempered" view to the vast changes in the communications arena. Bandwidth will grow dramatically, but hardware costs will prevent the residential influx of trillions of bits expected by cyberspace advocates. Even when "small office–home office (SOHO)" users create a mass market, the bandwidth will not flow like tap water. About 20 percent of the "wired" will consume 80 percent of the bandwidth with its attendant existing services. Telephone companies will be threatened, even changed, by the Internet, but not destroyed. Most important, the Internet will finally be put in its place -- like the automobile and the TV -- a possible object of obsession at various stages of human growth, but ideally a "tool" that does not substitute for human contact and the individual as a social whole; neither nations nor neighborhoods nor their "more structured networks" will become obsolete.
More Opportunity for the "Have Littles"
In a recent paper for IEEE Proceedings (1/98), Dr. Penzias noted that predictions about the future (including his own) "will be shown to have underestimated the pace of technology and overestimated its impact on human society." He gives as an example the "life in the future" exhibits at World Fairs and theme parks, noting how quickly life passes them by.
But, even with his own caveats, Dr. Penzias makes some remarkable observations about what business as usual will be like when the "corner office" and the symbols of rank no longer hold sway.
Commenting for this article, Dr. Penzias says, "The possession of wealth carries with it advantages. That's why it's called wealth. On the other hand, the Internet and related technology are a lot more accessible than most other enablers of social mobility. While this won't flatten our social systems, it will allow a much greater number of 'have littles' to compete successfully with the 'have lots'."
His "thinned, dispersed companies" will also broaden opportunities. He adds, "Multithreaded organizations will offer more pathways to success than traditional structures, hence more opportunities for competition ... My guess is that the new systems will be more performance-based than the hierarchical ones because of a greater reliance on market tests."
Voices from the Telephone Providers: The Convenience of Convergence
"The Internet explosion will translate to growth for Ameritech because we're more than a phone company," says chair and CEO Richard C. Notebaert, who will deliver the SUPERCOMM Opening Keynote Address on Tuesday, June 9.
"We are a full-service communications company," explains Mr. Notebaert. "This year, data will account for more than half the traffic on our network. We also offer cable TV services, security monitoring, Internet, and wireless services, because customers tell us that they want the convenience of being able to buy their communications services from one source."
Mr. Notebaert's company has prepared for convergence -- the notion that a single provider or consortium will bundle all telecom services for subscribers -- through experimenting with alternative technologies that could provide the "single pipe" into the home. Thus Ameritech has invested in cable television, which with appropriate modems can provide high-speed Internet access as well as asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), which transforms regular twisted-pair copper telephone lines into broadband access.
"Customers will choose the winners for us," says Mr. Notebaert. "We reach 11 million homes and 1 million businesses with phone lines today and more than 100,000 homes with cable TV. So we can serve more people more quickly with high-speed Internet access via ADSL. But we are also watching cable modem development. If, down the road, customers want cable modems, we will be ready with them, too."
As to when all of these anticipated things will happen, Mr. Notebaert replies, "Broadband services will become mass market when applications emerge that customers want. A good example is how customer demand for faster Internet access has led to expanded ADSL deployment. We expect our high-speed Internet access via ADSL to reach seven out of ten customers in three years."
New Technologies, Old Barriers
Mr. Notebaert cites regulations as the major stumbling block in meeting customer requirements. Old laws are simply out of sync with today's pace of technological change.
In early March, Ameritech petitioned the FCC to remove restrictions from data networks so that they might better serve First Chicago/NBD Bank, who wanted a data backbone for branches in four states.
"But we couldn't do it because of antiquated regulations," says Mr. Notebaert, "As a result, our customer doesn't have a single point of contact for network monitoring, and they have to spend more to install additional redundant circuits from their various network providers." Mr. Notebaert adds that Ameritech's European partners "don't have antiquated LATA (local area and transport area) restrictions and can build their own backbone networks throughout their service territories."
LATA regulations resulted from the 1984 AT&T Consent Decree, which, during divestiture, separated long distance from local service providers. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is an attempt to ameliorate these barriers, but implementation probably involves considerable government and industry efforts.
Laws outdated by technology also plague Ivan Seidenberg, Mr. Notebaert's soon-to-be counterpart at Bell Atlantic. Vice chairman and chief operating officer as well as designated chair and CEO, Mr. Seidenberg will give the IEC Luncheon Keynote Presentation. Says Mr. Seidenberg, "When you look at the communications industry, it's clear that whenever the market is allowed to work without entry barriers, rate-of-return regulation, or other government interference, the result is growth, investment, and innovation."
Of course, technological change has never waited for legal sanction. Consider webtone.
John Roth's World of Webtone
"The best way to understand webtone," says NORTEL (Northern Telecom) president and CEO John Roth, "is to think of dial tone. You pick up the phone and there it is."
Mr. Roth, the IEC Luncheon Keynote speaker on Wednesday, June 10, wants to bring the "convenience, comfort, and simplicity we've come to expect from a dial tone connection" to Web navigation and ultimately all forms of digital information.
The NORTEL leader notes that data networkers typically talk about downtime measured in hours or even weeks per month.
"This is an unacceptable standard," says Mr. Roth, who points to the 99.99 percent reliability and nanosecond downtime of "industrial-strength" voice networks.
According to Mr. Roth, data traffic, growing 10 times faster than voice, will account for nearly 80 percent of backbone traffic by 2000. A reliable and available "world of webtone" will therefore bring service providers into greater contact with their customers' reality. It not only better sustains today's forms of data transmission, but also opens the door to "a variety of intelligent information appliances at work, at home, or on the road."
From POTS to PANS: Software as Network King
POTS stands for plain old telephone service. PANS is Bellcore chair emeritus Dr. George Heilmeier's term for the broad spectrum of new networked services driven by competition and customer demand. And the shifting paradigm to make these new networks viable is not hardware, but software.
Dr. Heilmeier will put his more than 40 years of telecommunications experience to test on IEC's Executive Program Workshop entitled "2003 A.D. -- A New Communications World" on Tuesday, June 9. In that regard, Dr. Heilmeier likes to quote physicist Neils Bohr: "Predictions are always difficult ... especially about the future." The former CEO of the company originally founded to supply R&D to the new independent RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies) adds, "But it's easier to change the future than it is to change the past."
Joining Dr. Heilmeier for the workshop are Paul K. Hart, vice president, technical disciplines, United States Telephone Association; Jagdish Sheth, marketing professor and telecommunications prognosticator from Emory University; and Marc K. Newman, general manager, Washington Operations, Globalstar.
Dr. Heilmeier sees the present transition toward real-world solutions as exerting an impact on engineering practices. The common denominator will be increased significance of software programming.
Cost considerations will place a heavier emphasis on modeling and simulation as well as object-oriented methodologies instead of design from scratch. Software systems architecture will become the first network deliverable. The "solution architect" will emerge as the customer's advocate, ensuring that the value of systems design is directly proportionate to meeting customer needs.
Not surprisingly, the largest network companies will literally be software companies, in which domain expertise yields to broader knowledge.
As a result, Dr. Heilmeier ventures that infrastructure software suppliers have a long-term enhanced profitability outlook, stretching beyond 2003 at least to the end of that decade.
The evening of the 9th, Dr. Heilmeier's colleague, the entertaining Bellcore corporate vice president of applied research Dr. Robert Lucky, will speak at the IEEE Communications Society banquet. Dr. Lucky, who authors the popular and jocular "Reflections" column in IEEE Spectrum, believes a light-hearted address is right for this banquet setting. Muses Dr. Lucky, "people occasionally wonder what a vice president of research does. When asked at social events, I usually try to change the subject."
In addition to his welcome humor, Dr. Lucky has had numerous serious achievements; for example, Lucent credits him with the invention of the 56 kb/s modem.
Wireless 2000: The Internet in the Palm of Your Hand
While the year 2000 seems close for prognostication, the escalating growth of wireless usage makes it a significant milestone. As landline deregulation encounters obstacles, wireless providers (sometimes from the overall corporation) have an opportunity to make inroads in traditional residential service. Meanwhile, the technological focus is on the next and third generation of wireless.
Because of the heightened interest in the future of wireless, on Wednesday morning, June 10, SUPERCOMM's only plenary panel will discuss what the next three years will bring for wireless technologies and their applications. The distinguished panelists, chaired by BellSouth Mobility president Eric F. Ensor, includes James K. Brewington, group president, Wireless Networks Group, Lucent Technologies; Matthew J. Desch, president, Wireless Networks, NORTEL; Bo Hedfors, president and CEO, Ericsson; Dan Hesse, president and CEO, AT&T Wireless Services; Andrew Sukawaty, CEO, Sprint PCS; and Jim Walz, president, Iridium, North America.
Many of today's wireless systems still use first-generation or person-to-person voice analog technology. The more recently deployed all-digital cell phones or personal communications systems (PCS) networks are considered second-generation wireless technology. In addition to voice, these phones can perform some data transmissions, such as Mr. Ensor's BellSouth Mobility DCS E-Mail Service, which lets customers view 160-character messages on their phone's display screens.
The third generation, or 3G, is still a matter for debate.
Andrew Sukawaty's Sprint PCS has joined the nation's largest all-digital network together with Lucent Technologies, Motorola, NORTEL, and QUALCOMM to develop third-generation wireless systems based on the evolution of code-division multiple access (CDMA). The five companies announced in late February that they will trial the new technology no later than 2000.
Meanwhile, NORTEL's Matthew Desch takes a "pragmatic approach" to 3G. According to Mr. Desch, "3G is the full power and capability of the desktop computer in a fully mobile wireless device."
Mr. Desch, however, sees stiff economic and technical restraints to the 3G vision. For one thing, third-generation networks cannot provide sufficiently higher data rates.
"And to pay for the cost of developing and implementing those networks," says Mr. Desch, "the industry will need to uncover the killer service applications crucial to stimulating customer demand."
Thus, the quest for "real-world solutions" goes ever onward.
Mr. Zander: The Network Is Still the Computer
From its inception in the early 1980s, Sun Microsystems has built networking access into the architecture of their hardware. The final evening of SUPERCOMM '98, attendees will hear from an individual who has been responsible for much of the ensuing development of a more intimate computer-network relationship: chief operating officer Edward J. Zander.
In March of this year, several months after assuming responsibilities for the day-to-day operations of Sun Microsystems, Mr. Zander affirmed his belief in the eventual triumph of Sun's cross-platform Java language. But he simultaneously acknowledged that the necessary bandwidth for fully effective network computing has been slow to materialize.
"But I would not bet against bandwidth," says Mr. Zander. "In the not-too-distant future, we'll have an abundance of bandwidth as opposed to today."
This anticipation of an overflow of bandwidth will enable such key Sun-favored applications as low-cost network computers -- devices for which the vast majority of software resides on the Internet rather than on the hardware itself. Mr. Zander predicts that the percentage of NC clients will grow significantly by 2002, even to matching the percentage of PCs.
Of course, the networking topics typically addressed by Mr. Zander are very fluid, changing by week and month. Microsoft's adoption of a proprietary approach to Java is just one of the issues Mr. Zander and his company have recently addressed. But in the long term, his view that cross-platform Internet-based products represent the future forms a fitting prologue to SUPERCOMM '98's final plenary speaker, a gentlemen who sees virtually unlimited bandwidth as the foundation of a new world.
In Conclusion: Mr. Gilder
The final say at SUPERCOMM will come from one of the best-known telecommunications pundits and visionaries. A student of Henry Kissinger, President Ronald Reagan's most frequently quoted author and the writer of the Telecom column in Forbes ASAP, George Gilder -- president of Gilder Technology Group and senior fellow, Discovery Institute -- will hold the floor on Thursday morning, June 11.
What Mr. Gilder will say is not yet known. Dashing around the world, he frequently formulates his speeches off the cuff. But whatever he brings to the SUPERCOMM table, one may expect it to be a stimulating finale to the event.
On more than one occasion, Mr. Gilder has pronounced the demise of the telephone companies, heralding that their "time is past." In this respect, he is a tireless prognosticator of winners and losers, boosting the Internet protocol, packet switching, fiber optics, and CDMA.
His message, like the Greek philosophers in the agora, may well become a wake-up call for the complacent. Thus stirred to action, the providers of services and suppliers of equipment can only hasten to satisfy their ultimate judge: the end user.
For at SUPERCOMM '98, as with any marketplace at any time in history, it is the rule of supply and demand, in the end, that holds sway. And the operating of what 18th century thinker Adam Smith called the "invisible hand" will reshape the players for the next century.
As USTA's Paul Hart puts it, "Competition in telecommunications is going to make a group of vigorous competitors critically dependent on each other. The challenge of pulling this off is enormous."
Perhaps the immensity of vantage points at SUPERCOMM is just what the industry needs to prepare for such a colossal tasks.
Steve Pearse on Profit Opportunities for Telephone Companies
"Carriers are searching for new ways to improve profits. The answer is by offering new services and building the Business Class Internet. In order to be successful in this area, carriers will need to consider many issues, including quality of service, virtual private networks,, systems management, extranets, and voice and fax over IP -- just to name a few."
"Telephone companies will be basing their businesses more and more on the Internet and IP. The Internet is the 'wild, wild West.' We need to make that environment safe for business-critical applications. We can do that with IP by offering security, quality of service, and directory-enabled applications."
Biography
Stephen Pearse is executive vice president and general manager at Bay Networks, Inc. Along with Sybase leader Mitchell Kertzman, he will give the Global Telecom Market Forum/International Engineering Consortium Luncheon Address, Monday, June 8 at SUPERCOMM '98.
