Confirmed: SUPERCOMM 2009 Show Pushed Back to Fall

Originally Published March 17, 2009; Updated March 18

A spokesman for the SUPERCOMM trade show confirmed today that the trade show will be moved back from its current June 8-11 scheduled dates to later this year. While no official announcement has been made, the conference, which for nearly two decades was America’s largest telecom conference, is now scheduled for Oct. 21-23. The event will be held in Chicago.

There are also reports that an executive shake-up is in the offing at the show’s management company.

SUPERCOMM employees have been telling potential clients that the show’s management wants to wait until the broadband funding in the Obama Administration’s economic stimulus package takes effect.

First held in 1988, SUPERCOMM is one of the most venerable trade shows for the telecom industry but has had a tangled history of late. Originally jointly owned by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and the United States Telecom Association (USTelecom), the show was put on by the two organizations until 2006 when they split it into two shows: GLOBALCOMM (TIA) and TelecomNEXT (USTA). The following year those expos recombined into NXTComm. Last fall the organizations restored the original SUPERCOMM brand.

Currently the SUPERCOMM Web site lacks an agenda for the conference and lists two keynote speakers: John Stankey, president and CEO of AT&T Operations, and Patrick Esser, president of Cox Communications. As of Wednesday afternoon, the date was still listed as June 8-11.

While the sharp recession and layoffs in the telecom industry indicate that 2009 will be a tough year for trade shows, some more specialized shows including Internet Telephony Expo, held in Miami in February, and eComm, earlier this month in San Francisco, have appeared to draw healthy crowds.

Meanwhile, planning is well underway for the VON Conference & Expo, to be held Sept. 21-23 in Miami Beach. Co-located with Channel Partners, which begins on Sept. 23, the VON show now has three keynote speakers confirmed: Fred Briggs, executive vice president of customer serivce and program management at Verizon Business; Joe Burton, CTO of Cisco's unified communications division; and Joshn Silverman, president of Skype.

For more information on the VON Expo, and a conference agenda, please go to the VON Expo Web site.

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