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Friday, May 2, 2025

ICANN chief to step down in early 2016

by

20150521

Hours af­ter an­nounc­ing his res­ig­na­tion, Fa­di Chehad�, pres­i­dent and CEO of the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion of As­signed Names and Num­bers, left, fields ques­tions from mem­bers of the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean In­ter­net Ad­dress­es Reg­istry (LAC­NIC) at the LAC­NIC 23 con­fer­ence, held in Li­ma, Pe­ru on May 21. At right is Os­car Rob­les-Garay, CEO of LAC­NIC. Pho­to: Ger­ard Best

LI­MA, Pe­ru–The head of the non-prof­it group that over­sees all In­ter­net ad­dress­es will step down in March 2016.

The In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for As­signed Names and Num­bers (ICANN) Pres­i­dent and CEO Fa­di Chehad� sent no­tice to the board on May 21 telling them that he would leave af­ter an an­nu­al meet­ing to be held in Mo­roc­co in March.

Hours af­ter the news broke on Agence France Presse (AFP), Chehad� ad­dressed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the re­gion­al In­ter­net com­mu­ni­ty gath­ered in Li­ma for an an­nu­al con­fer­ence of the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean In­ter­net Ad­dress­es Reg­istry (LAC­NIC).

He said that dur­ing the re­main­ing 10 months of his tenure, ICANN would re­dou­ble ef­forts to give greater pow­er to the glob­al, mul­ti­stake­hold­er In­ter­net com­mu­ni­ty of gov­ern­ments, busi­ness­es, or­gan­i­sa­tions and users, so that no sin­gle en­ti­ty would have the au­thor­i­ty to de­ter­mine the fu­ture of the In­ter­net.

Chehad� has been over­see­ing ICANN's tran­si­tion away from the long­stand­ing US-cen­tred arrange­ment to­ward a more glob­al over­sight of ICANN's core re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the In­ter­net.

Chehad� had ear­li­er com­mend­ed the ICANN staff for mov­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion from a pre­dom­i­nant­ly US-based op­er­a­tion to a glob­al in­sti­tu­tion with of­fices and re­la­tion­ships spread around the world.

At stake in the tran­si­tion process is the con­trolof a vi­tal stake in the rapid­ly grow­ing glob­al dig­i­tal econ­o­my, which could ex­ceed 4.2 tril­lion US dol­lars by 2016, ac­cord­ing to a Boston Con­sult­ing Group study.

"As the dig­i­tal econ­o­my grows, the pres­sure to take con­trol of things will grow as well, and it is in­cum­bent up­on us to show that we are pre­pared and ma­ture and ready," he said.

For the last 25 years, ICANN has been con­tract­ed by the US De­part­ment of Com­merce's Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and In­for­ma­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion to man­age the as­sign­ment of In­ter­net names and num­bers glob­al­ly. That col­lec­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties is re­ferred to as the In­ter­net As­signed Num­bers Au­thor­i­ty (IANA) stew­ard­ship func­tion.

Chehad�'s res­ig­na­tion will take ef­fect short­ly af­ter the US gov­ern­ment re­ceives a plan to im­ple­ment the tran­si­tion of the IANA stew­ard­ship func­tion to ICANN and the glob­al In­ter­net com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing Re­gion­al In­ter­net Reg­istries such as LAC­NIC. A re­lease from ICANN said Chehad� would re­main avail­able to sup­port the tran­si­tion to a new leader af­ter March 2016 as well as to ad­vise the board on the IANA tran­si­tion.

"I am deeply com­mit­ted to work­ing with the board, our staff, and our com­mu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue ICANN's mis­sion as we still have much to ac­com­plish," Chehad� told AFP.

"I think this is the right time and the right thing to do."

Chehad� has al­so al­so over­seen the launch of new top-lev­el do­mains, such as .google and .crick­et. That process that has in­creased ICANN rev­enues un­der his tenure and brought the op­er­a­tions of the non­prof­it agency un­der height­ened glob­al scruti­ny.

Chehad� said he has ac­cept­ed a job in the pri­vate sec­tor, out­side of the do­main name space which ICANN su­per­vis­es. He said he would dis­close the name of his new em­ploy­er lat­er this year.


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