Walking around an ITU Telecom show, it is easy to spot the visitors that have just arrived – they are the ones with their jaws hanging open, pointing out just how b.i.g the stands are. Telecom ’91 was no exception – if anything the stands were bigger than four years ago; even IBM had jacked its metal monster up a few more stories and at least one exhibitor was heard to mutter about the need for a strategic stand limitation treaty. So, trying to summarise the main trends in a show that contained everything from neural networks to how to re-wire your country is a little bit simplistic but, nonetheless, for those of you that didn’t make it, here is the Bluffers guide to Telecom ’91 which will make sure that you are able to say the right things at those inevitable cocktail parties where the subject of global communications comes up.
(1) If you are asked about the technologies, there were three that seemed to keep popping up: Groupe Speciale Mobile communications; intelligent networks (lots of alliances between switch and computer vendors) and an absolute flood of bandwidth – broadband ISDN was perhaps the dominant theme of the show with Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching being demonstrated or talked about on the stands of all of the large switch suppliers. There were plenty of bandwidth-eating applications too: heaps of video conferencing, image and multimedia and more than a few video telephones designed to use Basic Rate ISDN. There is still rather a long way to go with these last items, however, since although they look rather neat, a quick glance under or behind the desk always revealed a Codec the size of a suitcase accompanied by promises to get the technology integrated onto a chip very soon. But if those were the technological trends painted with a broad brush stroke there are plenty of other smaller aspects worth dropping in casual conversation, to make it really seem that you were there. There were the displays of photonic switching technology on the AT&T Co and Fujitsu Ltd stands, for example, or the technologically innovative three-dimensional television on the Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp stand – a clever device that gives you a feeling for depth without the need to wear silly glasses. The only disadvantage with this was that, as with most things that try to trick the brain into seeing stereoscopic images, visitors to the NTT booth had to fight the desire to throw up. The Japanese area had more than its fair share of leading edge kit: just along from its display on photonic switching, Fujitsu stole, if not the show, then a small section of Hall Five with its demonstration of a neural network learning how to balance five wine glasses on a tray placed on the end of a stick. The same technology, confided the woman on the stand will eventually enable us to build robots that walk just like humans, and presumably spill drink down their trousers. Despite all this high-tech gizmology, there were mutterings from some visitors and exhibitors asking whether multi-Gigabit communications was really what the users wanted. Hence the interest that Craycom Ltd said it was getting, in the UK pavilion for its new multiplexors that can cram a telephone conversation down a 4.8Kbps link. Having tried it out, our sister publication Telegram concluded that it sounds little worse than the average transatlantic call and not like the dalek that might have been expected.
(2) Apart from products, the other area that everyone will expect you to know about are the new industry partnerships which sprung up at the show as companies hopped into bed with one another, got married, or in some cases just held hands. An exhaustive list will have to wait until next week, since some details were still coming in as this piece was being written. The bluffer simply needs to know that the alliances fell into three main areas: computer-switch, with both industries eyeing the intelligent network market; telco-telco, as the countries swapped knowledge and looked at the global managed data market; and computer-computer, particularly for managme
nt standards. If you find yourself being a little vague, this is understandable since the same names kept cropping up over and over again; hence the safe bet if anyone asks you about an industry alliance is to say ah yes, the tie-up with Ericsson – a company which, along with DEC, was involved in so many tie-ups that it was in danger of running out of string last week.
(3) Stands: as a dedicated bluffer you will need to be able to say a few words about your favourite stands, beyond remarking that they were big. A few pointers, then. Perhaps the most impressive was the German pavilion: four floors high in gleaming white. By contrast the US completely underestimated the size required to impress. As a result, their contingent were housed mainly in small cubicles with a few large stars and stripes hanging from the ceiling. The Saudi Arabian government gets the prize for the most elegant construction, with its PTT taking up residence in a rather beautiful Ali Baba’s palace. The award for the smallest stand causing the most interest goes to Ku-wait’s tiny cabin which, much of the time, had the vendors queuing up to find out just how badly damaged the country’s infrastructure was and just how much they were willing to pay to have it fixed. Finally, Alcatel NV won hands down on the profligacy – it’s various divisions managed to make sure that it was represented at the show not once, not twice, but on a staggering 21 stands, with five coaches from the Orient Express which were parked on the lawn outside Palexpo as a hospitality restaurant apparently this all cost a mere $30m.
(4) To be really cred when it comes to accommodation, you must choose one of two options: either you stayed in a private apartment in the centre of Geneva or, more plausibly, in a tiny skiing village one and a half hours drive from Geneva, despite the fact that you booked it over a year ago. The latter option also gives you the opportunity to moan about Swiss cab fares a one hour trip will have cost you in the region of UKP120.
By Chris Rose
