Comptel Plus

The COMPTEL PLUS Spring 2013 Convention & EXPO offers three days of educational programming, featuring top-notch speakers with decades of industry experience.  Our agenda is currently under development, but you can expect to hear about the latest trends, learn about successful case studies and participate in interactive discussions about the business, technology and regulatory issues impacting the competitive communications industry.  Among the topics that may be discussed include: 

• Advancements in Copper Technology
  • How has technology advanced the utilization of copper for broadband services? Extended distances? Increased bandwidth?
  • Ethernet over Copper: What are the new products and/or services?
  • Video content via IPTV over copper. What are the challenges? Benefits? Business case?
  • What are the issues and impact of maintenance by the ILEC provider?  

• Business Strategies – Transforming your Business Plan & Strategies for the Future
  • M&A: How to identify the “right” target companies.  Who are the buyers? How do you determine the valuation?  
  • Why merge? To enhance revenue streams? To acquire network assets or a customer base? To add products/services or talent?
  • Refinancing your debt as an option to merger? What are the short-term options?
  • Carriers: What new products/services are “game changers?”
  • Cable: What is the latest on your wholesale market growth? Network expansions?

• BYOD - Bring Your Own Device 
  • What are the issues involved with allowing your customer’s employees to use their own devices to access confidential company information?
  • What is the impact on your operations? Customer expectations? 
  • What is the value of BYOD? Is it a competitive response or in response to your customer’s demands to use their favorite devices via your network?
  • How does it change your business model? Product/service pricing? 
  • How do you handle the increased potential for security breaches?

• Cloud Services
  • What are the different business options? Reseller? Platform provider? Network provider? Integrator?
  • How do you sell the cloud to SMBs?  Is it different from other products/services? 
  • How do you determine what cloud products/services to offer?
  • What is the impact on the network and on your company organization? 
  • What are the potential security issues and legal liabilities with the cloud? 

• Company Administration Policies
  • What has changed with regard to human resources (HR) policies? Is your company in compliance? 
  • How can you attract new talent?
  • How do you hire talent? Do you determine critical employee profiles? 

• Cybercrime/Cybersecurity
  • What steps should a provider take to protect their network?
  • How do you handle a cyber attack? What do you do after an attack?
  • When and what do you communicate with your affected customers?
  • What are the potential impacts of cybercrime on your…Business? Network? Customers? Resources?

• Energy
  • Energy resale as an additional product line?
  • Rural and urban data centers: The link between reliable power and the ability to attract major customers? What are the other options?
  • How to go “green” to conserve power in your network and still provide reliable services? 
  • Disaster planning for outages.

• Impact of the 2012 Elections
  • How will the election results impact Congress, the FCC and future policies for the communications industry?
  • What will the critical issues be in 2013?
  • What is the economic forecast for 2013?

• Network Capacity Demands
  • How has network planning and engineering changed to deal with increasing user demands and traffic volumes?
  • Has intercarrier compensation (ICC) reform affected your network choices? 
  • Alerts/M2M traffic: How has the growth of short duration traffic affected your network? How can this type of traffic be managed?
  • What new construction techniques can be utilized to lower the cost of deployment of fiber and wireless?

• Regulatory Issues
  • Special access
  • IP-to-IP Interconnection
  • Last Mile Access – copper, fiber, wireless alternatives
  • USF/ Intercarrier Compensation reform –
    • July 1, 2012 rate reductions
    • July 1, 2013, rate reductions
    • High cost distribution? 
    • CAF Phase II and  Mobility Phase II  
  • 1996 Telecom Act: Rewrite, update or enforcement?

• Sales
  • What new products are impacting the marketplace?
  • What new sales techniques and marketing strategies can increase sales?
  • Should you sell your customer data? Why or why not? What are the issues?
  • How do you grow your business in a down economy?

• Serving the Healthcare Market 
  • What are the opportunities in healthcare market in rural areas? Urban?
  • How do you develop a telemedicine project?  Business case.
  • How to fund such projects?  USF (CAF)? State Funds? Private? 
  • Case studies of successful deployments.

• Unified Communications (UC)
  • How do you define UC? What is the target market?
  • Has UC reached market acceptance and scale?  Examples.
  • What are the M2M challenges?
  • Is billing and data gathering different for UC services?

• Wireless
  • Small/micro cell technology and deployments: What are the provider applications? What are the business cases for deploying?
  • Spectrum sharing: What are the implications of sharing government frequencies with private carriers? (PCAST report)
  • Wireline to wireless conversion technology: What are the future E911 requirements? How will it change the networks?
  • Spectrum auction: Who can apply? How will it impact your company?
  • Super Wi-Fi and white spaces: New applications/deployments? Business cases? Examples?
  • Wireless backhaul growth: What are the latest trends? Business opportunities? Technology? 

• For your session idea to be considered, you must include: 
• Proposed session title
• Abstract of the proposed topic, and brief description of the timeliness and relevancy of the topic. 
• 150-word biography of the proposed speaker
• Names of other suggested speakers, if a panel discussion is proposed