The unofficial report on Geneva Telecom 99:
Yes, Frank, I went to Geneva and didn't return much impressed. Geneva's Telecom
show started as a telco show way back in the seventies. Then vendors
started displaying and nowadays is mainly a vendor show. Then a telco was a
"natural monopoly" state-owned enterprise.
The world has changed. Even Saudi Arabia wants to privatize its telco. Those
throughbred state-owned telecoms enterprises are going the T-Rex way.
The show is losing its importance. The engineers -fom both, vendors and
telcos- have been brushed aside by guys who don't even know how to spell the
word teplephone, (sorry, telephone) but knows everything about making
money. (and if they don't know, at least they are putting a brave face to
it). Which doesn't matter, really, since vendors' engineers don't know much
about the products they sell.
Operators and the business-oriented guys don't have much time to hang around
the vendors anymore. (Perhaps they are too busy making money.) MCIWorldcom,
British Telecom, France Telecom, Deutsche Telecom were out. They had a token
presence via their global operators participation in Global One Unisource
and such. IBM also pulled out.
In 2003 perhaps it will not have relevance at all as a telco jamboree. But,
the show must go on, doesn't it?
Hey that is Switzerland, and they will do a quick dance, reposition the show
and people we'll show up.
1) The word is going wireless. Not surprising this being Europe.
2) Operators want to go up the value chain. Voice is being commoditized.
3) The Japanese want to leverage their competence in consumer electronics
and get the mobile terminals market for them. Nokia. MOT and Ericsson will
have a tough time in the 3G world.
4) Telephony guys were trying to discover what Cisco was up to and Cisco was
trying to hire any telephony guy on sight.
5) The Chinese telecom vendor are going after the market that used to be the
province of Nortel, Siemens. Lucent and NEC.
I went straight to the guy at the Nortel boot and told him:
"I do business Intelligence for .... your competitor. Could you, please tell
me some interesting stuff."
He answered: "We don't have anything here that you already know.
I wished him good luck and he told me to enjoy the show.
Perhaps there are still some honest people in the telecoms business. |
