Introducing Subsea Communications! By Anne LeBoutillier
Greetings all! Many of you will have already heard from me about the new Subsea Communications Conference that I am introducing with the support of Questex and on behalf of the industry. I wanted to take a few moments to provide you some updates on the event. First of all, I should once again express my appreciation to the industry members who have personally approached me and requested that I introduce and manage a new event that is specifically representative of industry interests and concerns. As many of you know, I have a passion for solid conference content, exciting speakers, and memorable networking/social events. It is absolutely my intention to bring 16
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Emerging markets such as oil & gas, and the potential for subsea and satellite communications to provide key transmission solutions
to you, the industry leaders, a high value, business generating, fun, entertaining and thoroughly insightful conference!
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New subsea cable builds, installation and maintenance initiatives, new technologies
I would also like to extend my thanks to those of you who have contacted me with support for this new event. The level of enthusiasm that I have seen for the Subsea Communications Conference (and its location at The Venetian Resort & Casino in Macau, PRC) has been remarkable. I’ll provide you a few statistics below that have been indicative of the sort of interest and enthusiasm I’ve received a bit later in this article.
It is also my intention is to introduce a segment on network optimization, which has become a key issue for service providers, and I believe will become a focus for large-scale enterprises as time goes on. Is this a risk or an opportunity for the subsea infrastructure? I hope you’ll find the topic worthy of discussion.
On the Conference Content side: We received a fantastic number of responses to an online survey that my team put together – my thanks to all of you who provided your thoughts! There is general consensus on a few key topics such as: •• Demand for capacity and drivers of global infrastructure/bandwidth usage, traffic forecasting, video/data traffic growth ••
Supply and pricing of networks, capacity, bandwidth, and competitive considerations where multiple systems exist
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Backhaul, city pops and co-location, and the ability of subsea and wireless technologies to work together to maximize effect and minimize cost
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The global financial distress and its effect on subsea communications projects and the telecom market in general
A couple of people requested topics relating to human resources and people management, which I have felt for years is or will be a critical issue in the subsea communications industry, where we tend to have highly specialized roles with little attrition, resulting in the potential for a talent gap in just a few short years. (Not to suggest any of us is aging, but realistically, have we done a good job of training replacements for our specialized knowledge base?) I’m in the process of working with a talent management firm to pull together an enlightening and high energy session on succession planning in a highly specialized industry. Finally, I’ve had a couple of requests for a session on the environmental impact of telecommunications, which in theory I love. Unfortunately, the only environmental steps that I’m seeing taken (other than the well established shore end installation and cable laying initiatives) is a reduction in power and cooling among some telecom service providers. If there are any slightly more exciting initiatives out there that you know of, please alert me