Futurecom: Telecommunications, IT and Internet Event in Latin America

Interview with Laudálio Veiga Filho, President of Futurecom

How would you evaluate the ICT sector at the moment?

The ICT sector has been consistently growing over the last few years and, with the convergent networks, it has great potential. There used to be a separation between IT and telecommunications but, nowadays, the sectors are integrated, and we can no longer speak distinctively about them.

The growth of the sector has been above the GDP and the tendency is to maintain this growth over the next years. There is a diversity of new apps that create huge telecommunications traffic and the investment is huge due to this traffic. We are used to hearing people saying that the cell phone service is bad but that’s not due to the cell phone service. The cell phone companies have been investing billions of Reals on the sector each year but it’s still not sufficient to face the increasing traffic.

Where do you think investment is needed?

The great basis for IT and telecommunications development is the investment in the networks. The main solutions require investment and amplification of the networks and the improvement of the older networks.

Which would be the other main challenges for the sector?

One important thing to be done is to improve the quality of the networks. We cannot grow and not maintain the quality of the networks.

One other thing that is very important to improve are the call centers of the operators. I am part of the sector and I defend our operators that have been really investing and have been facing difficulties: the sector with the most complains is the telecommunications one. However, other sectors also have the same difficulty.

Brazil is going through a very interesting employability phase. This a very good phase, but the quality of the workforce has not yet attained the quality it should have. There is no executive or employer in general with whom I talk to that doesn’t complain about the difficulty in getting qualified labor. In a country like Brazil that needs to grow and that has demands, qualified labor is very important. This is where the education level comes in: the education level in our country has to improve a great deal. Education in Brazil is going through a very complicated moment, because the level of education of the teacher (and not the level of the student) has been decreasing a lot. It’s completely “innocent” to say we must pay more to teachers, because that’s obvious, but we have to pay more to qualified and well prepared teachers.

Futurecom is the biggest ICT event in Latin America. How did the idea of creating such an event occur, and who participates on this event?

The first edition of Futurecom happened in 1999 and it was created due to an existing demand after the privatization. I happened to work in the HR department of a company and created some events, after the privatization, I created the brand Futurecom. The first edition that took place in 1999 was held in Foz do Iguaçú and it was an immediate success. In 2000, it was also held in Foz do Iguaçú. From 2001 until 2007, it was held in Florianópolis and the visitors came mainly from Sao Paulo (71%). After 2007, we took the event to Sao Paulo. It was great to be in Sao Paulo with Futurecom; it was a special challenge with new suppliers, new contacts, etc. It was quite challenging, but it was very successful.

Our event is quite big now, but we preserve quality. Quality and innovation represent the air that we breathe. Futurecom is a synonym for innovation.

We are now implementing Futurecom All Year, which is a fantastic program that has been very well accepted by the companies. Rather than having the event concentrated on specific dates, we want to extend Futurecom actions all year long. One of those action is a fortnightly newsletter edited by the journalist Renato Cruz (one of the best journalist in the sector) in which the journalist interviews the presidents of the companies.

Futurecom All Year has no economic interest. It’s a service we provide to our clients without charging for it.

Which are the companies that will participate in the event, and what are the statistics for the event?

Futurecom is a B2B business event. It aims to bring the value chain of the ICT market together. The value chain of the ICT market is not just telecommunications, Information Technology and Internet. The corporate clients that participate in Futurecom also compose the value chain. We have Petrobras as our biggest retail client – they buy a huge amount of tickets for their technicians, engineers, directors, etc., so that they can participate in the event and see what the sector can offer in terms of innovation. Other clients are Mastercard, Johnson & Johnson, Ford, etc.

Most of the Brazilian companies participate in the event as congressional representatives, visitors, etc.

In Sao Paulo, the number of participants is around 15,000 and last year, 52 countries were represented. Futurecom has definitely entered the international agenda in terms of shows. There is an increasing number of international executives. Two years ago, we had the presence of the president of the USA FCC Regulatory Agency, the president of Telecom Italia, etc., and it’s an honor for us to have the presence of such big names in the industry.

How would you resume the benefits the event brings to the sector in general and to participants?

Being a B2B event, Futurecom has a clear goal: it’s a technology event and an event that tries to discuss the sector’s problems in the short, medium and in the long run. We discuss technology, we discuss the business models, and we discuss important regulatory aspects and the public policies pertaining to the regulation.

In Brazil, one of the most heated discussions is about the use of the 700 mega-hertz in telephony for the 4G. That’s an intense discussion in Futurecom. The discussion about the business models is also intense. Today, we have the difficulty of the investment in the amplification of the networks but that is more associated to over-the-top services that are growing a lot, but it makes it hard for the sector to maintain a good quality for the telecommunications users. I believe this problem will be solved via a market solution.

What is your vision for the sector two years from now?

There will be an adjustment between the operators and the over-the-tops.

Someone told me the other day that telecommunications in 10 or 15 years will be very different from what we are used to now. I really believe that we are going to go through a profound change in terms of world communications.

Which are your expectations for this year’s Futurecom event?

All Futurecom events are always organized in a loving way. We really want our clients to succeed and we want to help build a strong sector. We want the sector to overcome its difficulties and to have a future that contributes to the growth of the country, of society, of people and of professionals.

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