The End of SUPERCOMM

The folks at SUPERCOMM have finally owned up to the widely rumored rescheduling of its Chicago trade show to October. This might not have been so bad if it didn’t occur after SUPERCOMM spent months expressing outrage over the false (“nasty!”) rumors spreading throughout the industry (what is otherwise known as lying). And it certainly didn’t help that the reason provided was incredibly lame: “This enables us to provide a comprehensive and timely forum to introduce new and enhanced programming and business opportunities that the stimulus will undoubtedly bring for the broadband community.”

First, let’s admit that the 21-year-old SUPERCOMM franchise never recovered from the dotcom/telecomm meltdown earlier in this decade. From the standpoint of both exhibiting companies and attendees, the numbers dropped more than 50 percent from a 1999 peak and declined from there.

Second, the owners of SUPERCOMM, TIA and USTA went through a messy divorce and then a shotgun remarriage, thus destroying whatever brand equity they had accumulated. SUPERCOMM split into TelecomNEXT (the USTA piece) and GLOBALCOMM (the TIA piece) for a couple of years and then got back together as NXTcomm (why do these people have such trouble with capitalization?). My guess is that some branding genius finally told them that having the same name for 18 years and then three different names in two years was really not very smart. So in 2008 it was back as SUPERCOMM. Unfortunately, it was too late. One of the intractable problems with brand equity is that once you destroy it, it’s gone.

Third, give me a break with the broadband stimulus “alignment.” Most service providers I’ve spoken with, after watching populist politicians grill corporate CEOs every night on CNN, are beginning to look askance at accepting help from Washington. Even if they are planning on applying for stimulus funds, keep in mind we’re talking about less than one percent of the stimulus spending associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or about $60 per U.S. household.

It’s time to call an end to this charade. We had plenty of good years, starting in New Orleans, moving to Atlanta, and finally to Chicago. We watched the creation of the Web and the invention of broadband. We saw the NASDAQ hit 5100-plus, and many thought a big router company would have the first trillion-dollar market cap. It was good while it lasted, but enough is enough.

Kevin Walsh is vice president of marketing at Zeugma Systems, which sells gear to allow broadband service providers to identify, monitor, manage and customize traffic flows on a per-service, per-subscriber level.