But he said that, in a way, that’s OK. “We’re tracking really well in terms of the key vendors,” he said. “The people who still come are the ones … who are going to be buying things, the ones who want to get something done.”

Show attendees I spoke with yesterday echoed Heymann’s sentiment: This year’s Interop isn’t about ogling booth babes while getting your booklet stamped to win a Wii; it’s shaping up to be a more focused, get-what-you-need show where attendees are coming to learn, to meet potential partners, and to get things done.

“It used to be companies just sent people because everybody sent people,” an attendee told me yesterday as we were registering. “Now, you really have to justify it, but a lot of people are still coming, and they’re coming with a clear agenda.”

And as another attendee pointed out, it might be leaner but it’s still a much more happening event than SUPERCOMM, which is now as lean as it can get: Cancelled.

Whether you’re trekking out into the Las Vegas sands or watching safely from your home base, IT Knowledge Exchange has you covered: The Enterprise IT Watch Blog is teaming up with SearchNetworking.com to bring you the most comprehensive Interop coverage. Follow Interop coverage on the IT Watch Blog or check out SearchNetworking’s coverage on the Network Hub. If you’re in Las Vegas yourself, shoot me an e-mail at Michael@ITKnowledgeExchange.com: I’d love to hear what you’ve learned, seen or heard, and we have plenty of free swag to give away to IT Knowledge Exchange members!

Brains, brains ... and your secure credentials!

Just in time for Halloween, it looks like Nokia Siemens Networks is trying to re-animate the vision of Microsoft’s decrepit Passport single sign-on system, but this time in the hands of telecom companies.  The times sure have changed, but will users be spooked by having their data in the hands of Verizon, AT&T and other service providers?

Out at SuperComm, Nokia Siemens Networks invited me over to hear the latest about its One-NDS subscriber data management platform. One-NDS is in version 8.0, and as the NSN representatives explained it, it has ambitious plans for when it finally grows up: Provide a single sign-on service, managed and maintained by telecoms.

The Nokia Siemens representatives told me the service could allow a user to access the same services, with a single sign-on, from, for example, a home computer, their cell phone and a TV, and pointed to services like Google Apps, Amazon and Yahoo! as potential tie-ins. Eventually, Nokia Siemens hopes, carriers will hold and control all aspects of the “digital self,” giving users a central, secure way to control how their information is being used online, and who’s allowed to use it.

When I asked them why NSN and telecoms would succeed here when Microsoft struggled so mightily, they pointed to a recent global survey they took: 82% of the 9,200 respondents said privacy is an important topic, while 45% responded that they felt like they lack control over their personal data.

But why telecoms? Nokia Siemens had a survey for that, too: They didn’t say that telecoms were trusted or loved by users, but that they were at least more trusted than other industries, including insurance companies, loyalty card providers and the government.

While it’s certainly no small feat to rank better in a survey than an industry satirized for Mafioso shake-downs, I have to wonder if users will really trust an industry that considers nickel-and-diming them standard operating procedure with their most sensitive data in what will likely be a proprietary platform.

Even Microsoft Passport’s descendant, Microsoft Live ID, seems to have learned a lesson in the intervening years: It’s announced support for OpenID, which drops the centralized control in favor of a more open, diverse ecosystem of authenticators and which lately seems to have actually gained some traction as more major online destinations announce their own support for the protocol.

Even on opening day, two of SuperComm’s three keynote Q&A panelists were pulled by Obama for “pressing business” in Washington, according to a source: Jonathan Adelstein, administrator of Rural Utilities Service, and Larry Strickling, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information for the NTIA. That left only Blair Levin, an executive director at the FCC, to try and talk up all the great grant money the government’s hoping to inject into the telecom industry

But as AT&T’s Jim Cicconi said during an earlier panel, there’s been a whole lot of loud non-interest in this stimulus funding, since the major telecoms are passing it based on what they say are too many strings attached, particularly since it’s only a hair over $7 billion distributed across 50 states, mere chump change for major telecom players. While smaller ventures are eagerly bidding away, none of the major service providers have touched the stimulus funds (I would also wager it’s because these major providers generally avoid the rural, low-ARPU areas the stimulus targets like the plague to begin with).

So that left the major carriers and the industry that supports them (hardware manufacturers, consultants, integrators … the list goes on) to bemoan the drafting of net neutrality regulations every chance they get. It dominated every panel it could work its way in to, from ones specifically about  rural initiatives to a talk on DRM and digital media distribution.

So what’s next?

Well, despite a surprisingly conciliatory joint statement between Verizon and Google just days after Verizon’s CEO blasted net neutrality, this fight is far from over for either side. It was one of big telecom’s biggest lobbying efforts ever, and SuperComm attendees seemed geared up to keep fighting. Even if regulations do come through, for example, they are largely expected to end up with a large legal loophole along the lines of “reasonable network maintenance.” This was the grounds on which Comcast swatted down BitTorrent sharing, and unless the regulations are worded quite carefully, service providers might find plenty of avenues to stop competing voice and video services from denting their revenues.

Cicconi’s blistering attack makes the 2012 trailer look like a playdate compared to what could happen if the net neutrality backers win: Short-term job losses, the degradation of Internet infrastructure, even Internet blackouts. No YouTube, Priceline or ITKnowledgeExchange? I’ll take the riots, earthquakes and John Cusak, thank you very much.

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“It’s very easy for people to make decisions involving other people’s jobs,” Cicconi said at the SuperComm opening panel that was slated to cover stimulus dollars but largely focused on the FCC’s new net neutrality guidelines draft, which is slated to be made public tomorrow. The panel, made up largely of executives from both service providers and equipment vendors, largely concurred with Cicconi’s sentiments (The FCC’s John Horrigan, consumer research director for the Omnibus Broadband Initiative, largely stayed out of that particular fray).

Very often, it’s the creation of jobs that net neutrality backers point to, such as the Open Internet Coalition’s open letter to Congress:

A competitive marketplace creates jobs, helps the American consumer, fosters innovation, and drives economic growth. We must aspire to achieve the world’s most advanced communications networks, building on the tradition of American policy and innovation that created the open Internet. We must maximize competition on next generation networks by guaranteeing access and by ensuring that all networks interconnect and interoperate.

But Cicconi took time to take aim at groups like this and others that are producing favorable net neutrality reports:

I think it is a dangerous illusion for anyone in government to think that more regulation will provoke more investment, not less. There are reports coming out, but these reports … are written by groups that have never run a network, nor do they have discernable investment experience.

The FCC is playing a very dangerous game if it listens to any advice of this nature.

[Net Neutrality] is an important reality check for government: You’re pushed to achieve a Utopian end people have dreamed up, but that’s not how government works. Government works to solve problems … and nobody has made a convincing case that there is a problem here that needs the government to step in.

And this was all what Cicconi publicly said: One can only image what he and Tom Tauke told the private luncheon for telecom decision makers earlier in the day.

Catch up on all of the IT Watch Blog’s SuperComm coverage, or follow us live at @ITKE on Twitter. At SuperComm and have something to share? E-mail me directly at Michael@ITKnowledgeExchange.com.

Verizon Wireless’ latest telephone campaign, Droid Does, is a direct attack on AT&T’s iPhone dominance, and they’ve also been running those cheeky “We’ve got a map for that” parodies (not that any of it’s hurt AT&T so far).[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/37NKnDRPFKU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

So what could bring the two warring wireless behemoths into such close quarters and at allied aims? No less a specter than Net Neutrality itself. Tom Tauke kicked off the discussion by reminding the small gathering that, as the FCC unveils its network neutrality proposal tomorrow, “There is no broadband without broadband investment.”

At this point, I was kindly escorted out of the room and informed the lunch was closed to the press (there had been no notice of this on the invitation I’d been handed nor the lunch room entrance). The meeting wasn’t the first Tom & Jim show, and unless the proposal tomorrow is radically different than what anyone is expected, be prepared for more frenemies-with-benefits as the giant telecoms try to knock any teeth out of the final Net Neutrality guidelines, both from behind closed doors and out in the public spotlight.

Have any hot tips from SuperComm, or thoughts on net neutrality, AT&T, or Verizon? Leave a message in the comments or shoot me an e-mail at Michael@ITKnowledgeExchange.com.