Ger­ard Best

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 he would leave af­ter an an­nu­al meet­ing to be held in Mo­roc­co in March.

Hours af­ter the news broke, 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 dur­ing the re­main­ing ten months of his tenure, Icann will re­dou­ble ef­forts to give greater pow­er to the glob­al, mul­ti-stake­hold­er 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 from this long­stand­ing arrange­ment away from US-cen­tred con­trol to­ward a more glob­al over­sight of Icann's core re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the In­ter­net.

Chehad� had ear­li­er com­mend­ed 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 con­trol of a vi­tal stake in the rapid­ly grow­ing glob­al dig­i­tal econ­o­my, which could ex­ceed US$4.2 tril­lion 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.

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.