Pipeline Publishing, Volume 5, Issue 1

	This Month's Issue:
	Cableco vs. Telco

Billing World: Version 2.0

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good understanding of the services their video customers value and are working to ensure that the same level of customer experience is available for telephony and broadband as well.

The Exhibition Hall

A more compact space than in the boom years, but quite well attended nevertheless. Thanks to the Virgo folks for thinking about how customers use the exhibition space too. Having chairs and tables scattered around meant that you didn’t need to leave the hall in order to rest your feet, make a call or type up some notes. A nice touch.

The vendors I spoke with reported a reasonable number of service provider shoppers, and several quite interested in actually making a purchasing decision this year.

A relative new comer that caught my attention was ECtel, offering an Integrated Revenue Management system that combines fraud management, revenue assurance and revenue management. It can be implemented module by module, quickly and at low cost. They’ve posted a couple of big wins in a short period of time, most notably AT&T. Their easy to use, “all in one” dashboard provides quick and accurate views on all important metrics, and drill down is simple: just click on the graph and dig down as deeply as required, right down to the specific CDR if necessary.

The Bottom Line

While overall attendance is down again year over year, this show clearly still is of interest to the community that really counts: service providers. The show venue was good, but the agenda suffered from the all-too-typical conference problem. Too much “talking at” and not enough “conferring”. With only ten minutes between sessions and no lunch room, delegates had to choose between attending sessions and continuing their conversations. When this show moves to Las Vegas next year, let’s hope that they add some more time for networking and dialog, too. I’ll be there to see how it goes!

A few thoughts on the expo…

By Tim Young

While we're very pleased with Barbara's reaction to the conference programming, we thought we'd add a few notes on the expo portion, in which Barbara was unable to spend much time, but the rest of the Pipeline team took in fully.

We asked every company with whom we met to describe their reaction to the show, and the comments on the show floor were almost universally disappointed.

We asked every company with whom we met to describe their reaction to the show, and the comments on the show floor were almost universally disappointed. It seems that many of the service provider reps who took in the conference programming and probably attended preplanned meetings probably didn't spend much time on the floor. If they did, they certainly weren't engaging the booth personnel, generally speaking.

There is always a space in the industry for a conference. An opportunity to get together and exchange ideas is valuable. That portion clearly went well. However, a trade show with a full expo floor may not be necessary if booths are seldom visited. This may have been an off year, and we fully understand that Virgo just acquired the show and probably didn't have time to make any major changes in the show or drum up a brand new attendee base. Still, the feedback we encountered really couldn't go unreported.

One drawback may have been scheduling. The show came a mere 2-3 weeks before the TMForum's Management World and NCTA’s The Cable Show. Many exhibitors we talked to were saving press releases for those larger shows. I would assume that at least a few potential attendees may have opted out of B/OSS, as well. An earlier date for next year's event (April 14-16), as well as the show's move to Las Vegas will hopefully bode well for attendance

In the future, we hope that Virgo will take Billing and OSS World back to a place of tremendous value in the space. It could serve as a fantastic conference or, with a little work, a revitalized expo. As it stood this year, though, the expo side of the event was rather quiet. We wish Virgo the best in improving the event, which has been important in the space, and anticipate next year's show.

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