Twomey became CEO and president of ICANN in 2003. He announced the decision not to renew his contract for next year at the opening session of the Mexico meeting.
Twomey will stay until the end of 2009 and will assist with the transition to his successor, who will be appointed by the board of directors.
Vint Cerf, often dubbed “the father of the internet” and one of the chairmen of the ICANN Board, said: "I can think of no other person who has had more influence on the course of ICANN's evolution than Paul....The Board will be challenged to find a worthy and capable successor."
Other topics discussed during last week’s Mexico City meeting included the second draft of the Applicant Guidebook – an instruction manual for users applying for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), which are set to be launched later this year – and the expansion of internationalised domain names (IDNs), which are web addresses displayed in non-Roman characters.
ICANN said in a press release last week that it is carefully considering the consumer benefit and pricing of the new gTLDs.
In an independent third-party report commissioned by ICANN, Dennis Carlton, professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a senior managing director of Compass Lexecon, an economic consulting firm specialising in competition matters, said: “ICANN’s proposed framework for introducing new TLDs is likely to improve consumer welfare by facilitating entry and creating new competition to the major gTLDs such as .com, .net, and .org.”
Carlton said in a second report that caps on prices charged by operators of new gTLD registries “could inhibit the development and marketplace acceptance of new gTLDs by limiting the pricing flexibility of entrants to the provision of new registry services without generating significant benefits to registrants of the new gTLDs”.
In a video address delivered from the meeting on the subject of the Applicant Guidebook, Kurt Pritz, ICANN vice president of services, said: “ICANN is taking seriously the overarching issues that have been identified in the community, which include protection of trade mark rights, prevention of user confusion and ensuring the ongoing stability and security of the domain name system.”
Pritz added that questions from attendees at a session aimed at explaining the more than 50 substantive areas of change to the initial draft of the Guidebook “demonstrated the interest of the community in moving forward in the process”.
“We think this version represents a considerable improvement, and that is due to the participation of the community,” said Pritz.
The application round for new gTLDs is unlikely to open before December 2009. This would mean that no new gTLDs would be available until well into 2010.
The second draft of the Guidebook includes changes to the charges for new gTLDs, with a reduced annual payment, but extra charges for operators with large numbers of domains.
A third draft is expected at the next ICANN meeting, in Sydney, Australia in June.
More than 1,200 people attended the ICANN Mexico City meeting.
