TCA's new site mirrors advances in its programs.

TCA's New Site Mirrors Advances In Its Programs TCA made a change for the better at its 1990 Conference at the San Diego Convention Center.

The new location gave the Tele-Communications Association's gathering a unified, bright and modern look which reflects its programs.

TCA

The "Great Communicator" award went to David J. Baumgarten of McGraw-Hill, Colorado Chapter, whose humorous "The English Do Speak English ... Don't They?" detailed discrepancies in British and American ways of saying the same thing.

A networking installation in the UK had provided him with a rich lode of linguistic/technical snafus.

We say telephone, they say handset. We say A1Key (key system), they say key and lamp. We say elevator, they say lift. Judges said "Jolly good show."

The American Institute (a telecomm management training organization) gave a $3000 continuing education scholarship to the winner.

A full 351 bleary-eyed TCA members, and the entire editorial staff of Comm News helped raise $5000 for the TCA scholarship fund by walking or running a course sponsored by Timeplex in a pre-dawn event.

Top single-day hoofers include Jim Arvanitis, Rand Corp./spouse, who did the walk course four times; and Don O'Connor, Fluor Daniels, who did the 2.5-mile run three times.

By Wenesday at 2 p.m. the old conference attendance record fell. Final tally shows 20,000 attendees.

Members and guests used the occassion to attend educational seminars, and 340 vendors added glitz by introducing new telecomm offerings.

Members were brought up to date about the FCC's recent approval of price caps for the RBOCs and GTE. Details are on page 37.

Michael Senkowski, TCA's federal regulatory counsel, said FCC Chairman Alfred Sikes set himself up as the peacemaker between the Republican FCC and the Democratic congress. He also tries to be "Sikes The enforcer," going after Nynex on financial irregularities, for example.

MCI's Bill McGowan talked globalization in his keynote:

"The industry was 'born again' with the advent of competition. A sleepy industry is now a dynamic, high-growth, 'Type A' industry.

"the TCA was the first user group to support this type of competition. You deserve credit for what you did."

McGowan alluded to a new "global information technology" fed by weakened Communism and further openings in world markets.

"Information technology doesn't just tricle down. It gushes--down, up, everywhere. Ridig, centralized bureaucracies are a thing of the past; mass customization is the future."

He called information "one of the world's great non-depletable resources. It will help balance the world's economic powers. The gold standard is giving way to the information standard."

McGowan's company also grabbed the show spotlight with it s announcement that it will offer switched T1 and T3 services in 1991.

The offerings are the start of a family of Virtual Private Data Services that the carrier says brings the power of supercomputers to the desktop. MCI teamed with Cray Research and IBM, demonstrating how the services can provide short-duration, high-capacity long-distance connections for computing equipment.

Cray demonstrated remote supercomputer access over switched T3, remotely accessing a supercomputer in Minneapolis from a Sun workstation in San Diego. IBM used switched T1 for applications such as LAN interconnection, image transfer, and sharing of widely separated computing facilities.

In another demo, IBM, Teleos, and US Sprint showcased 384 kb/s ISDN transmission. A workstation in San Diego was linked to an IBM AS/400 in Rochester, Minn., in a sample of IBM's AS/400 ISDN Acess, part of its CallPath Services Architecture. The demo used a Teleos IRX9000 ISDN Resource Exchange Switch.

Closing keynoter Victor Pelson of AT&T Communication Services drew an analogy to the oil/Iraq crisis: "Oil doesn't do you any good underground; information technology doesn't do any good if it's still in the lab."

This is a solvable problem, he said. "The supply problem with oil has brought us to the edge of war; the supply of information is inexhaustible."

Pelson called for "creative partnering" between vendors and customers. "Information is the high-grade fuel to propel profitability in the '90s," he said. Telecomm was anything but a commodity market, yet some segments behaved that way, he added.

"It's value-sensitive. We must continually invest to remain competitive."

On regulatory matters, Pelson urged keeping the RBOCs out of areas the MFJ enjoined them from. The RBOCs couldn't compete in the long-distance market "while monopolizing the local exchange--the world's biggest tollgate. Users can't afford to have the regulatory clock turned back." He also called for an end to lingering pricing restrictions on AT&T.

NEC America's President Hisoshi Kaneko predicted more vendor and user alliances and product planning to bring about the dream of integrated computer-communications solutions.

The heart the new information management systems? An advanced PBX with intelligence and connectivity to computers via gateways.

Next year's conference is Sept. 23-28 at the Convention Center.