NXTcomm Day Three Keynotes

Dr. Richard R. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Cable Television Laboratories Inc. kicked off the final day of NXTcomm with a keynote focused on convergence, interoperability and the importance of openness in networking.

“No longer are we telephone people and cable people,” Green said. “We are all basically in the same kind of business competing with each other to the benefit of the consumer.”

Green highlighted Cable Television Laboratories’ adoption of True2way as an example of industry collaboration and adoption of open standards. Time Warner Cable has deployed nearly two million True2way boxes and CE manufacturers including Panasonic and Sony are incorporating the technology into their television sets.

“Greater openness and open platforms in the access network are fundamental to attracting innovators,” Green said.

Jagdeep Singh, President, CEO and Founder, Infinera spoke on the importance of innovation broadband network deployment.

“Are we up to the challenge of overcoming and innovating around a dangerous bandwidth bottleneck?” Singh asked.   “The current pace of innovation in the optical core network is insufficient to meet future demand.”

Singh urged the industry to move away from creating similar products that compete on price in favor of differentiating themselves through innovation.  “Go after unsolved problems and deliver significant value.”  Singh recognizes that, “It is difficult to invest in research and development if the company isn’t healthy,” but believes in-house R&D is a key factor in developing innovative products.

Singh cautioned against reliance on off the shelf components and suggested that companies focus on developing key components themselves.  Further, Singh urged service providers, carriers and venture to get over their reluctance to invest in and buy from young innovative companies and to demand and reward innovation from vendors.

Phil Asmindson, Vice Chairman and National Manager Partner - Technology, Media and Telecommunications, Deloitte LLP and Jay Samit, CEO, Long Beach Studio followed with a lively discussion on mobile entertainment.

“Every new media starts by repackaging a previous product for a new medium,” Samit explained.  “All the different screens make things very complex.”

Samit said that the entertainment industry was reevaluating the difference between marketing and entertainment content and suggested that consumer desire is relative equation. “In entertainment you have to start with what are their expectations, how much control they want over it and how long is their attention span,” Samit explained.  He used celebrity chatbot site www.spleak.com as an example.  Samit said the site plans to engage an entirely different demographic by applying their celebrity gossip model to fantasy football. “If you can find the entertainment they are passionate about, they will consume it.”

Mark Burnett, Hollywood Producer and Creator of “Survivor” and “The Apprentice” wrapped up NXTcomm’s keynotes with his take on content creation and technology.  Burnett used entertaining stories from his life and rise to fame to illustrate the importance of entrepreneurship and creativity.  Burnett’s success has been based largely on his ability to take inspiration from nature or personal experience and apply it to something completely different.

For example, the idea for The Apprentice came to him while he watched ants working on the rain forest floor.  He later pitched the idea to Donald Trump who liked it and asked that he work with his contact at a talent agency to develop it.  When Trump discovered that the agency had dismissed Burnett and his idea, the agency contact was summarily dismissed himself with Trump delivering the now signature line, “You’re fired!”

Burnett was quick to point out however that while inspiration can be found in many places, it takes more than simple adaptation to generate compelling content for new mediums.  As with all the keynoters at NXTcomm08, Burnett was clear that this era of mobile broadband and multiple screens is an entirely new ball game and must be treated as such.  A fitting end for an excellent event!

Some unique giveaways from the NXTcomm show floor:

Stuffed frogs with magnetic feet.  These cute little things can hold your notes and pictures on the fridge but I think it would be far funnier to put a few on your car just see them hanging on for dear life.  Thanks TELUS!

Celtics jerseys.  After the Boston Celtics won The Finals, Boston based ACME Packet outfitted their entire booth staff with Celtics jerseys.   More impressive, the entire booth staff managed show up on time the morning after!

Water.  It has broken 100 degrees here in Vegas every day I have been here, making the guys who were tossing bottled ice water to the folks cooking in the taxi line heroes of the show.  Thanks Intel.  You probably saved a life today!

WiMAX is a prevalent technology at NXTcomm08.  It was mentioned in many
keynotes, it appears on many booths and is the subject of an all day
workshop today.  However, despite the term’s popularity, several
knowledgeable people asked me what exactly it was – besides being the next
big thing.

I couldn’t find a general, consistent definition of WiMAX but technically it
refers to any wireless technology that has been blessed by the Worldwide
Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) Forum.  WiMAX – which can be
thought of as WiFi’s big brother - is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard,
also known as WirelessMAN.  The WiMAX Forum describes WiMAX as “a
standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless
broadband access.”

But this is where things can get murky because the standard doesn’t specify
many of the parameters the telecom industry generally likes to use to
describe a wireless technology, making WiMAX something of a generic term for
wireless broadband. Fortunately, the WiMAX Forum and the companies who have
a stake in the technology, appear committed to making sure that all the
possible implementations of the technology are compatible each other.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about WiMAX is that it operates in
a licensed – as opposed to unlicensed – bans of the radio spectrum.  The FCC
limits the power of products in the unlicensed spectrum, keeping
transmissions from traveling too far.  Operating in a licensed band prevents
“the tragedy of the commons” that occurs when so many people are using a
finite resource that everyone’s experience is diminished.  WiMAX products
will have to be certified by the WiMAX Forum and will operate at a higher
power on a radio frequency set aside for it by the FCC. This should
guarantee impressive range, speed and reliability of WiMAX broadband
products.

I for one am looking forward to having a WiMAX transceiver chip embedded in
my skull to get around this clunky “meat” interface we are stuck with for
now – but that’s just me.

As Cnet reported yesterday, Verizon Communications COO Denny Strigl announced Fios fiber-to-the-home speed upgrades during his keynote speech at the NXTcomm08.  Fios customers will now have access to download speeds of 50 megabits per second and uploads of 20 Mbps.  Low-end Fios service speed will increase from 5Mbps/2Mbps to 10Mbps/2Mbps, although it was unclear (to me anyway) if existing low-end customers would experience any speed gains without upgrading.

By the end of this year Fios will pass by twelve million homes, a figure that is growing by three million homes a year.  Within five years, the company expects to extend their FTTH service to the 3.1 million households in the five boroughs of New York.  Verizon also plans to extend a fiber backbone to China in time for the Olympics.

Verizon’s broadband expansion extends into their wireless offerings as well.  “Convergence is the holy grail,” Strigl said when describing the company’s plans to adopt a common protocol for application s to work across all of their networks.

Dan Hesse, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sprint Nextel Corporation picked up the wireless thread saying, “Mobile data is what we are building our Sprint brand around.”

Sprint is betting heavily on WiMax and plans to deploy the high-speed data service in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington DC this year.  Hesse  pointed to Sprint’s Instinct handset as one example of how consumers might carry a WiMax enabled device, but added that embedding WiMax capability in other consumer electronics products was the company’s ultimate goal.   “The WiMax embedded chip model lets us break the cell phone groupthink,” Hesse said.  “We will use open standards because the walled garden stifles innovation.”

Scott McNealy, Chairman and Co-Founder, Sun Microsystems continued the open source theme by explaining Sun’s business philosophy.  “Free is a good business model,” said McNealy.  “We started open source when we started giving away our software in 1982.  Our software is free and we monetize it through storage and service contracts.”

Sun gives away 2 million copies of Open Office each week and McNealy claims, “Not one Web 2.0 company would admit to paying for commercial software.”  In describing why Sun would spend so much on research and development while giving away their products for free, McNealy pointed out that open source software turns all users into beta testers.  He used Java, which he expects to be embedded in an increasing number of CE products, as an example.  “There are 6 billion Java devices in use today without a single virus.”

During the speech, McNealy quietly announced that Sun had developed a version of My SQL specifically for carriers that the company planned to give away as well. With a shy smile, McNealy said simply, “Free is cool.”

All three speakers were excellent, each offering a compelling vision for their company and some news for the industry.  Hesse and Strigl wore sharp suits, used their teleprompters and made a series of insider jokes about each other.  McNealy however wore a slightly wrinkled shirt, khaki pants with stuff in the pockets and carried a paper script.  McNealy began by saying “I don’t know why I’m up here with these corporate guys,” and continued to speak quietly and sincerely throughout.

I can’t speak to anyone else’s reaction, but I was really taken by this unpretentious, passionate engineer.  If Hesse and Strigl are the carrier’s equivalent of Steve Jobs, McNealy struck me as the Steve Wozniak of the group although none of them may appreciate the comparison.  Again, they were all good, but McNealy spoke to my inner geek and made me a believer.  Pass the Kool-Aid!

I haven’t been everywhere on the show floor yet and it is only day two, but here is a list of things usually found at Vegas tradeshows that are noticeably scarce or absent at NXTcomm08:

Porn flyers and cards littering the halls and bathrooms

The smell of too many people in a small space

Small booths of consumer grade trinkets

Mentally ill people posing as reporters

People sitting on the floor

Lines for the bathroom

Wheelie bags

Beach attire

Complaint

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that there is nobody here.  There are plenty of people milling around and getting down to the business of doing business.   They are just being surprisingly polite and professional about it!