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Rob Hall

From ICANNWiki
Country: Canada
LinkedIn:    [Profile Rob Hall]
Twitter:    @MomentousRob

Rob Hall is the CEO of Momentous, and currently sits on ICANN's NomCom.[1] He acts as the Chairman of various Momentous' subsidiaries, such as Pool.com and Zip.ca. Mr. Hall founded CIRA, the registry in charge of Canada's ccTLD, .ca, in 1998.[2]

Background[edit | edit source]

Previously, Mr. Hall was the CEO and founder of of Echelon Internet Group, and Internet Access Inc. The latter was an Ottawa based ISP that became a regional leader, cornering 30% of the Ottawa market; it eventually merged with Hookup Communications and went public.[3]

Mr. Hall founded CIRA in 1998, and was its founding chair until 2000, when he resigned; CIRA was started after his work with the Canadian Governments' "E-Commerce and Domain Name Taskforce". He also founded the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, which represents all Canadian ISPs; he served as its Vice-Chair and as a Board member for 4 years. He has frequently consulted with the Canadian Government, the U.S. Government, WIPO, ICANN, and other international organizations.

In the mid-90s, Rob hosted a radio show, "Surfing the Net"; he also had a weekly column on the Internet that ran in Sun Publishing's chain of newspapers.[4]

Momentous[edit | edit source]

Robert is credited with building Pool.com's unique idea of allowing multiple people backorder the same domain name, and then settle the conflicting interests with an auction between all interested parties. They now deal with hundreds of auctions everyday,[5]

Mr. Hall is known for his focused, no-nonsense management style; he is looking for the strongest individuals and stresses that the company is a team, not a family.[6]

A grocery list of tips for success on the Internet from Rob can be found here

ICANN[edit | edit source]

Rob has been involved with ICANN in a number of roles; he has been the Vice-Chair of the Registrars' Constituency,[7] and has also worked as a contractor at ICANN.[8]


a holding company of internet-based and entertainment businesses with over US$30 million in annual revenues. Zip.ca is a Momentous company, as are Canada’s largest internet domain name companies, Internic.ca, DomainsAtCost.ca, NameScout.com and Pool.com. Together, these companies have over 1,000,000 individual and corporate customers.

Mr. Hall was an early Internet pioneer. He founded Ottawa’s first internet service provider and the Canadian Internet Registry Authority or CIRA, which now manages the .ca Internet domain names. At the same time, he hosted a radio show called “Surfing the Net” and wrote a weekly column about the Internet for the Sun Publishing chain of newspapers.

His leadership has led him to various roles within ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization tasked with managing the Internet on a global basis. Today he is the Vice Chairman of the Registrars Constituency of ICANN.

Prior to founding Momentous.ca, Mr. Hall was CEO and founder of Echelon Internet Corp. and Internet Access Inc., an Ottawa based ISP that quickly grew to be one of the largest in the region, capturing over 40% of the Ottawa market. In 1996, Internet Access Inc. merged with Hookup Communications and began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

For the past 16 years he has been the Chairman of the Ottawa Competitive Volleyball League (OCVL) and served on other non-profit boards such as the Ottawa Carleton Ultimate Association (OCUA), the world’s largest Ultimate league.

Mr. Hall, who favors volleyball, skiing and piloting his own plane, is a devoted Rush and Van Halen fan as well as a founding season ticket holder to the Ottawa Senators. He attended the University of Ottawa for Computer Science (honours).

Employment History[edit | edit source]

Board Memberships and Affiliations[edit | edit source]

  • Founder, Momentous.ca Corporation
  • Voting Member, ICANN
  • Registrar-Appointed Member of Budget Committee, ICANN
  • Board Member, Drake Domains Corp
  • Vice Chairman, Registrars Constituency of ICANN
  • Founder, Canadian Internet Registration Authority
  • Board Member, Canadian Internet Registration Authority
  • Founder, Canadian Association of Internet Providers

Education[edit | edit source]

  • University of Ottawa for Computer Science[9]

References[edit | edit source]

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