ISPs Meet in Baltimore

It's ISPCON time again and the organizers have lined up an impressive bunch of speakers, exhibitors, and even a good baseball game.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [May 23, 2005]

ISPCON is, in theory, put together by a large number of people, including the advisory board of which I'm a member, but the fact is that a small group of people at The Golden Group do almost all of the work, and they've built something especially impressive for May 24 through 26 in Baltimore.

To find out the absolute latest about ISPCON, go directly to Inside ISPCON, the blog of Jon Price, who runs The Golden Group. For example, you'll find out that luncheon keynote Earl Comstock, was a potential FCC nominee. Don't miss that or any other ISPCON keynote.

Whatever you do, if you're there, don't ignore the vendor sessions (especially if you're on an exhibit hall pass—you'll have access to these but not to the conference sessions). One key way to survive is to offer value-added services, and most of these sessions cover that. Other key ideas are to become a CLEC or a wireless provider—and those ideas are also covered in vendor sessions.

Whether or not you attend ISPCON, plenty of companies are holding important news to announce it at the show. One company that's allowing us to tell you their news a day early is Cyprus-based IceWarp, which will announce version 8.0 of their Merak Mail Server tomorrow. At the show, the company will be running hourly demos and will feature other companies at its booth who will demonstrate the power of the programmability of the mail server.

Entire industries, such as anti-spam, acceleration, and billing, will show up at ISPCON. Billing Concepts, for example, will be demonstrating its worldwide billing and settlement system covering credit cards, debit cards, prepaid phone cards, and even phone bills that the company announced earlier this month. Akmin (see Website Builder for Any ISP) will also be present.

The exhibitor list is particularly impressive this time. An unusual addition is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which wants all ISPs to report "any apparent child pornography" but we'll have to ask them if ISPs are indemnified against any breach of privacy lawsuits.

If you haven't met ISP advocates Cynthia de Lorenzi and Frank Muto, you'll get to meet them at the booth of the Washington Bureau for ISP Advocacy (also see our article, Your Free Washington Bureau For ISP Advocacy). If you're attending, you probably have met the coop builders behind the American Association of Service Providers (AASP). If you don't know them, see our article, A Real ISP Association.

Other vital information sources exhibiting at the show include Wireless Tech Radio and the Web Host Industry Review.

The conference sessions themselves are astonishingly good. We simply cannot describe them all, but the 10:15 to 11:15 AM slot on Tuesday is typical of the dilemma you'll be faced with—deciding which of many great sessions to go to. Tom DeReggi, Dustin Jurman, and Jeff Thompson discuss WiMAX; Cynthia de Lorenzi (you must meet her) talks about ISP advocacy, Jay Ferron presents part 2 of his security track; there's a session on peering in North America; Jason Talley chairs a session on VoIP again and he's very active in VoIP advocacy (ask him questions); and Eden Recor gathers a gaggle of WISP CEOs to trade war stories.

There will be plenty going on at ISPCON, and you'll hear about it for some time after the show is over, here at your ISP news source, ISP-Planet.

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