Microsoft disappears from Telecomms show, booth collapses

HERE LAST YEAR the INQ was closely watched by the Microsoft Vole, but this year the Redmond Juggernaut was strangely absent from the exhibitors list , so I had no chance to poke fun at the Evil Empire. My only contact at the Vole refused to comment.

But the list of noteworthy absences continues... despite making a big landing both in terms of money and market-domination intent, Carlos Slim's telco, TelMex had no booth at the show. Only the mobile arm of the Mexican empire - CTI- was present, and it was a real pity because I'm sure TelMex fixed-wireless Phone+Internet services would have attracted quite a crowd, specially those of us like this scribbler who's fed up with the incumbent fixed line providers.

Also absent was, once again, Sun Microsystems and Novell. I really don't know what they're thinking. Surely they have a PR/advertising budget, but use it on something else. This show is the perfect opportunity to have a direct contact with thousands of customers -even a small booth would have sufficed to promote Sun's StarOffice and OpenOffice and the open standards speech, for instance, or mobile Java games and applications, and in the case of Novell's, the company's linux based solutions. They should learn from folks at MercadoLibre, the local auctions site affiliated with eBay, which manages every year to do a big marketing effort with a tiny booth but using an inexpensive yet effective approach which is handing over thousands of free yellow plastic bags so visitors can carry on the tons of leaflets handed during the show. As a result, everywhere you go there's a MercadoLibre bag and logo within eye sight.

Another company gone this year was Velocom, the wireless ISP and the operator of one of the two operating WiMax networks in Argentina. The rumour on the show floor was that Velocom's -and its parent company's Datco- financial situation was disastrous for a brief time after a poorly planned acquisition of AOL Argentina's customers, and that might have influenced this decision of not being on the show. Eventually, everything indicates that recently Velecom has been purchased by the local Nextel branch, the U.S. mobile operator owned by Sprint, so those problems will hopefully be over going forward.

Asked why didn't Datco had a booth this year, a company employee who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said "we are concentrating on Silica Networks, our fibre optic backbone, and we felt that such a carrier-grade business does not benefit much from a consumer-oriented event like this one".

Booth Collapses, shocker!

Booth collapsed. No one was hurt.

One day before the end of the show, this scribbler was walking the exhibition floor when a loud noise was heard. I originally thought they were assembling -or disassembling- a new booth, but minutes later I passed by the place where the noise came from: a complete booth which was setup in a "two story" arrangement had collapsed.

Mach Electronics. Speed can kill!

This scribbler asked around and was told that luckily nobody was seriously hurt. After that incident, the booth at spot #F11 and near the entrance -which belonged to Mach Electronics- remained closed during the last day of the exhibition. So, believe me when I tell you that these shows are dangerous business.
Solid solutions...

This must be the famous Southern Cone?
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