The Internet service provider, as it was once understood - the deliverer of dialup Internet access, or even high-speed service - is an antiquated concept. ISPs are evolving with "Internet services," and ISPCON is evolving along with them.

Of course, that evolution is by design. And a big part of that design has been the inclusion, over the last several years, of material related to Web hosting - both in the exhibit hall and in the educational tracks.

Jon Price, the main architect of that design, makes an important distinction, however. The Web hosting content is not included in ISPCON to engage an audience separate from ISPs. It is included to accommodate an important part of the Internet service business, he says, and a kind of service that should not, today, be extricable from the idea of an ISP.

In conversations with theWHIR leading up to the event, Price expressed his concern that publications focused on the Web hosting business might paint ISPCON in the wrong light. ISPCON, he says, doesn't offer separate content for single-play operators. It offers a range of content for providers that offer a range of services. And for those narrow-focus operators that attend, he says, he hopes ISPCON opens their eyes.

"I can't think of any examples of where it's generally smart for any business to be only one thing to one customer and never expand, evolve, diversify and consider other avenues of growth or markets outside a single offering either coming in or out of hosting from or to another area of service in related markets," says Price. "In fact, that's the beauty of ISPCON - it creates a tremendous number of unique perspectives in one place while having a profound effect on those who came with one thing in mind. Generally, they'll leave with a thousand new ideas that they'd never considered and wouldn't be found elsewhere."

While Price offers appropriately forward-thinking notions about what Web hosting means to the ISP business, and what ISPCON should mean to that business, the event itself may be slightly behind his intentions in its execution.

That may not be the fault of the conference program as much as it is a result of certain preconceptions brought to the event by some attendees. While the session program veered into specific tracks for services like VoIP, hosting and wireless - services Price feels are part of the larger ISP reality - sessions just as often bridged those technologies in the more general "business" and "marketing" tracks.

Speaking near the conference's end, Price says he sees the role ISPCON has to play in enlightening Web hosts who still think of themselves as just that and access providers who think of themselves as ISPs.

The challenge for ISPCON in the coming months - the next event is already scheduled for May - may not be building in new sessions that recognize the universality of Internet service providers. Those, it already includes. It will more likely involve building in functions for helping latecomers understand the new ways that service providers are thinking about their businesses.