ORLANDO, Fla.-After nine years, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association is considering consolidating its fraud conference with its wireless partnering conference to create an operations conference, said David Diggs, CTIA vice president for wireless security.
Plans for a future fraud conference are in flux at this point, but Diggs told attendees at this year’s conference held here last week that next year’s conference would be held in the spring rather than fall.
Diggs later told RCR exact plans are not yet set for the future of the fraud conference. However, plans are stable for CTIA’s partnering conference in mid-May. A decision on the future of the fraud conference will be made during the first quarter.
Several factors are weighing in on the group’s decision of whether to continue with its fraud conference. Three smaller conferences (partnering, fraud and Wireless IT) in addition to CTIA’s larger trade show, can drain resources. By consolidating partnering and fraud into an operations conference, CTIA said it can focus on the issues impacting the people running the business day-to-day.
Also, cloning is now more manageable, so fraud issues have changed. “Cloning is containable. It was not containable in 1993 and 1994,” Diggs said.
Hence, fraud has become more of a business issue rather than a wireless issue. “Our issues are less uniquely wireless … the cable industry had its own [technical fraud issues]. It is now a more general type of fraud,” Diggs said.
Contrasting all of those issues is the apparent success of this year’s conference, Diggs said. The 1998 fraud conference had eight platinum sponsors, while this year’s conference had 12. Additionally, he said there was a hue and cry from vendors when rumors started circulating that the fraud show would be melded into the big trade show. Diggs assured attendees and emphasized to RCR that will not happen.
