With Paul Twomey, ICANN’s CEO and President, set to step down from his position at ICANN mid-year, and continuing as a consultant with ICANN till the end of the year, there is undoubtedly going to be speculation as to what his next role will be.One position the Australian press has suggested he is a chance for is as chair of the A$43 billion National Broadband Network (NBN) company that will build and initially operate a fibre to the premises national broadband network.While not one of the favourites, these are both businessmen aged over 60 years of age, some consider these “yesterday’s men” with speculation falling on people such as Twomey as contenders.The NBN company will build and operate an Australia-wide high speed broadband network that will:
- connect 90 percent of all Australian homes, schools and workplaces with broadband services with speeds up to 100 megabits per second
- connect all other premises in Australia with next generation wireless and satellite technologies that will deliver broadband speeds of 12 megabits per second.
The network will be built by a company to be established by the Australian government who will also be the majority shareholder, but with significant private sector investment.The speculation in the Australian press was in Australian IT here.