Amitabh Singhal

Person
Community	ICANN Community
Organization	ICANN
Region	AP NA
Country	India United States of America

Amitabh Singhal is an Indian telecommunications executive and Internet-governance advocate with more than four decades of combined corporate and non-profit experience.

Early Career

During the mid-1980s Singhal helped introduce personal computers in several Indian government and public-sector organisations.

From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s he was Senior Vice-President and Group Head of Corporate Affairs at GTL Limited, contributing to the country’s first privately-run data networks for e-mail and electronic data-interchange services.

In 1994-95 he co-founded the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI), serving first as Secretary and later President. He helped draft India’s initial Internet-licensing framework and acted as the ISP sector’s chief spokesperson for almost a decade.

National Internet Exchange of India

Singhal conceived and, with the Government of India, founded the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). As founding CEO he oversaw the country’s first Internet exchange points, the commercial relaunch of .in ccTLD and installation of India’s first three root-server instances between 2003 and 2005.

Regional and global engagement

He organised capacity-building programmes that enabled India’s early participation in APNIC and worked with government agencies to host the first APNIC, ICANN and Internet Governance Forum public meetings in India.

Public Interest Registry

Singhal served eight years on the Board of Public Interest Registry, five of them as Board Secretary, and was closely involved in PIR’s applications for new generic top-level domains.

International consultancy

In 2018 he advised Afghanistan’s Ministry of Communications on launching the National Internet Exchange of Afghanistan (NIXA) in Kabul.

Current work

Singhal is leading an initiative to develop a technical platform to improve trust and security online and chairs the Bureau of Indian Standards working group drafting a Network Maturity Assessment Model.

ICANN Board of Directors

Nominated by the ICANN Nominating Committee, Singhal joined the ICANN Board in 2024 for a term ending at the Annual General Meeting in 2027.

Education

• Bachelor of Arts (Humanities)
• Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.)
• Post-graduate Diploma in Marketing & Sales
• Certified Independent Director, Institute of Directors (India)

Asia/Australia/Pacific, according to the ICANN Geographic Regions (ICANN Geographic Regions).

North America, according to the ICANN Geographic Regions (ICANN Geographic Regions).

Internet Service Provider

Country code top-level domain. Determined by "ISO 3166-1: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country codes".

Asia Pacific Network Information Centre