ISPCON, the leading event for wired and wireless ISPs, kicked off to a great start yesterday as industry luminaries spoke to packed rooms in five instructive and profitable session tracks, the first of two keynote sessions received excellent response and the exhibit hall opened its doors. ISPCON Spring 2006 is being held in the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, MD, and will continue through Thursday, May 18.

To begin the day, speakers from a variety of aspects of the Internet held general sessions on a number of topics including dial-up, Ethernet, SARBOX, wireless, Exchange hosting services, VoIP and CLEC strategies. The general sessions are split into five tracks including: Access, Services, Strategy, Operations and Business. The first round of sessions has had extremely positive feedback and the remaining speakers are sure to maintain that momentum in the remaining two days of the conference.

The opening keynote session, entitled "Muni Networks: Partnering for Affordable Broadband," was delivered by Bill Tolpegin, vice president, corporate development and planning, municipal networks division of Earthlink Inc., and Raghu Rau, senior vice president, global marketing and strategy, Motorola Networks. These two industry leaders discussed their own partnership in municipal wi-fi, and how the Internet industry can collaboratively drive the use of wireless networks and affordable broadband. The second keynote is titled "Neutrality Reality" and will be delivered by David S. Isenberg, principal of isen.com LLC. In what is sure to be a profoundly enlightening and entertaining keynote, Mr. Isenberg will address what lies ahead for the Internet industry and economy as the issue of network neutrality looms.

The exhibit hall opened at 3:00 p.m. with the energetic buzz of over 70 exhibitors from all facets of the industry. Corporate host Motorola, who also sponsored the ISPCONNECT attendee communication system, displayed prominently in the center of the room. Other exhibitors included everyone.net, Verio, PEER 1, Sendmail Inc., Mirapoint Inc., Tucows Inc., Hostopia and Web Host Industry Review, among many others.

Jo Ann Reinhorn, associate director at AT&T Wholesale, said of the first day of ISPCON, "It's been great. I've been very impressed with how the show has gone. Everything has run so smoothly."

ISPCON Managing Director Jon Price concurs. "The show has gotten off to a great start and I think that it will only get better from here," said Price. "This year's theme is 'On your mark, get set, Succeed.' This event is about sharing stories and strategies, collaborating for success collectively as an industry. I'm looking forward to seeing the final two days continue to exemplify that idea and more success stories are written at ISPCON."

To learn more about ISPCON, please visit www.ispcon.com.