This year, the re-branded ANGA.COM show and conference will take place from Tuesday June 4 up through until Thursday June 6, 2013. Broadband TV News spoke to Dr. Peter Charissé, managing director, ANGA, about the new focus of the show and the refreshed conference programme.
There is a big change in the name of the event, from Anga Cable to ANGA.COM. Can you tell a bit about the rationale behind the decision?
“Our rebranding will reflect the recent development of ANGA’s scope: For many years our exhibitors have presented much more than cable and satellite technology. The product range covered has continually increased: Especially fibre networks, IPTV, conditional access, video on demand and consumer electronics, which are all well established topic areas.”
There are also some changes in the conference programme, maybe you can expand on this?
“Besides our core topics next generation networks (NGN) and content delivery we have multiscreen, TV Everywhere and Smart TV very high on our agenda. And for the first time the entire third day of the congress programme will be dedicated to the “Connected Media Home”. The new Liberty/Samsung Horizon platform is one very prominent example for new products in that field. It is no surprise that Samsung will have a much bigger presence in Cologne than last year.”
In recent years, the event has changed from a purely German cable event into the most important European show – can you tell us from which countries you attract the most professionals?
“We are very proud that the share of international visitors reached 50% last year. More than 7% came from the Netherlands, followed by Belgium, the UK and Switzerland.”
And can you also tell us from which countries you would like to have more visitors?
“We are already working on some ideas to attract more visitors from Eastern Europe including Russia. Another focus is the United States. Therefore we recently closed a cross promotion cooperation with the Cable Show of our colleagues from the NCTA.”
Some years ago, the show doubled in size, from just one floor into two floors. What are your experiences with this?
“It was the right decision at the right time. The bookings we received already today exceed the space we would have available on just one floor. Especially for the “Boulevard” at the new floor level we have a lot of exhibitors that renewed their bookings for the third time since 2011.”
Times are tough for business, but this industry continues to do well. How is the situation for Anga.com?
“90% of the exhibition space is already booked. Compared to other events we may have the advantage of a sharp profile combined with a strong domestic market with 40 million households.”
How is German broadband competition developing? Is Deutsche Telekom striking back the cable attack?
“What we do notice is that Deutsche Telekom is targeting a very important group of our traditional customers: the housing associations. But we as well have the experience that the recent broadband investments by Deutsche Telekom have turned less significant than originally announced. However, broadband competition will accelerate – not least due to LTE. It is not without reason that “fibre versus mobile” is the key topic of one of our biggest congress panels: The International Technology Summit. And our Broadband Summit this year will be held under the title: Growing Bandwidths, falling Prices: With how much Competition can a Market cope?”
For more information about this’s year ANGA.COM, please visit the official website.
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