NXTcomm 2007: Communication Industry’s ‘Auto Show’ Presents Its Version of the Concept Cars

NXTcomm (or, as Chicago calls it, LSTcomm) bid adieu to the Windy City in spectacular, auto show-esque fashion this year.  Last month, thousands of attendees viewed presentations in the several co-located shows and toured the nearly 500 exhibitors occupying 200,000 square feet of McCormick Place floor space.  At the “telecom auto show,” lots of bells and whistles were displayed as they might be used in our living room, just as automakers display cars at their shows that might one day be on the roads.  Granted, the final model won’t look anything like the model exhibited at the show, but in a few years, when the rubber meets the road, you’ll recognize many of the features.

For example, Cisco Systems’ CEO John Chambers showed a vision of the future during his NXTcomm keynote address.  Walking attendees through a “continued (musical) experience” from the car to the living room, Chambers showed how a musical experience wouldn’t need to be halted or interrupted by the walk from car to home.  Certainly, this may not be a life-changing application – nor even one that is of interest to most consumers – but the features and innovations that allow this future-vision to be possible will certainly find their way into the future of telecommunications, and those who witnessed this presentation will likely recognize the similarities.

John Chambers, Cisco Systems CEO, Shares His Vision of a Future Living Room Scene

During His NXTcomm 2007 Keynote Address

SOURCE: NXTcomm

During his keynote, AT&T’s CEO Randall Stephenson similarly hyped his company’s new video-sharing service, Video Share.  This service is not simply a concept car-style marketing demo but is actually being rolled out in some AT&T Wireless markets.  Picture yourself peering through the outstretched arms of an auditorium full of parents holding cell phones aloft so relatives can share in the view of every school play and piano recital.  (Of course, that’s not the scene shared with us at NXTcomm but, rather, our own futuristic technological nightmare.)

Indeed, the idea of audio and video that follows customers from place to place and the mobility that allows the sharing of experiences like never before were prevalent themes at NXTcomm this year – an expansion of the “audio everywhere” world embodied by Walkmans in the ‘80s and iPods in the ‘00s to “video everywhere” made possible by new wired and wireless devices.

The only other theme that came close to “video everywhere” was Ethernet.  Every equipment vendor seemed to be hawking an Ethernet device.  If the future of voice and video transport is the Internet Protocol (IP) currently utilized by data – that is, voice via VoIP and video via IPTV – then Ethernet is bound to be the carriage method of choice.  NPRG already envisioned that trend with our Metro Ethernet Report, published earlier this spring.  NXTcomm simply proved our forecast of the coming Ethernet storm… with a torrential downpour of Ethernet-ready equipment.

In the end, this year’s NXTcomm wasn’t particularly groundbreaking.  The main themes of the show – video everywhere and the place of Ethernet in this new IP world – were well-known beforehand.  But the industry’s unified path in achieving these goals was heartening, even as the centrally-located city of Chicago gives way to the glitter of Las Vegas, NXTcomm’s NXTcity… NXTyear.