Last-day-of-the-trade-show keynotes are rarely memorable or well-attended, and in the long run, if last Thursday`s closing day keynote session at NXTcomm is remembered for anything, it will be for the number of F-bombs that Survivor impresario Mark Burnett dropped on the telecom audience. However, CableLabs president and CEO Richard Green also spoke that morning, and made one of his recurring attempts to appeal to a telco audience, pointing out that his agency`s tru2way open set-top box standard should be--and easily could be--adopted by telcos, too.
Thus far, telcos have not appeared to be much interested in tru2way, though if it continues to gain support from consumer electronics firms, telcos may be carried along on the wave. Also, while the traditional telecom industry types have good reason to be interested in cable and content issues these days, Green and Burnett may have been scheduled to speak on the last day of the show because earlier in the week would have posed either too much of a confrontation or a slate that was not telco-centric enough, or both.
