Proposed by: Peter Gradwell, Gradwell dot com Ltd
Seconded by: Jon Farmer, Entanet International Ltd

Additional statement from Adam Beaumont

Election Statement

I feel that not only do I wish to assist Nominet in achieving its goals and ambitions, but also, perhaps, to help define new ones.  My past experience on the Nominet PAB and approaching 10 years as a tagholder brings me awareness of the Nominets’ origins and operation.  However, looking forward, I believe my main contributions will draw on my commercial experience of the convergence of "The Internet" and regulated/non-regulated telecoms.

Following the widening of Nominets’ remit from the .uk namespace to the UK ENUM tier 1 delegation, I believe that there is a need to draw experience from both the internet community and also the telecoms arena. This has started to happen, but I believe that few candidates have extensive experience of both sectors.

As projects such as ENUM promise to become the backbone of a transparent communication hierarchy, this will necessitate that Nominet will become a cornerstone in the carrier-grade reliability of the UK telecoms industry. 

To date, Nominets’ sphere of influence remains in the largely unregulated internet industry, but, looking to the future, a managed transition into the realms of regulated telecoms will be a necessary outcome.

This will involve a closer and more defined relationship with the UK regulators such as OFCOM and Phonepayplus and encompass a new layer of considerations such as the routing of premium billing services, 999 calling and perhaps some still unforeseen issues associated with the increased functionality leveraged by such technology.  I hope to facilitate the pre-emption of some of these issues by the assistance in management of working groups and liaison with bodies such as the ITSPA to allow early adopters the chance to share their experiences, concerns and suggestions. 

There is also the need to liaise with and recognize the importance of the existing telecoms infrastructure providers and their roles in underpinning any shift in technology.  I have extensive understanding of the underlying infrastructure within some of the major UK networks and how this can be leveraged both technically and commercially, having rolled out projects involving, to date, over 40 million geographic numbers and counting.

In addition to the new, there is still some tidying-up to do, which should not be resource intensive, but which I would propose to oversee.  There are still significant portions of the x.uk sld namespace which are run by private companies which operate outside the sphere of Nominet.  This is a historical arrangement analogous to "pre-Nominet domains." I believe the pursuit of a more formal commercial framework should be fostered with such private entities.

Curriculum Vitæ

Adam Beaumont PhD BSc MIET, MRSc

Ad@beaumont.me.uk       07778 619409   //   0 11 33 20 30 40     Born - 1972

Having lectured for 3 years in physical chemistry at the University of Leeds, my dabbling with the academic network lead me to a position with (what was) the DERA in secure mobile and land networking.   

In late 1998, My interest in the internet lead me to run a "hobby" website, which registered .uk domains.  My DERA position was short lived when .uk domain registration pricing was reduced to £5 per domain and I found myself running a busy domain registry and hosting company.  My company, aql benefited greatly from the boom of registrations, peaking at registration volumes bringing it consistently in the top 3% of domain registrars.

In 2001, which saw the end of "speculative" domain registrations and a consolidation of the registration industry, I changed the focus of our company - investing significantly into interconnection with the uk mobile networks.   This was the beginning of "internet accessible" mobile messaging, the decline of the pager and capitalisation on the desire for engineers to receive SMS type pager alerts via mobile handsets.  2001-2003 was also the period when I served as an elected member of the Nominet PAB.

In 2004, aql invested in voice infrastructure and became a BT-interconnected telecommunications provider.

Today aql hosts over 30 million Ofcom-assigned UK geographic numbers for SMS and approximately 15 million numbers for voice, has over 15,000 SMS messaging subscribers, including some of the largest UK public and private entities. aql still serves domain registration customers and we set up the UK’s first SMS domain renewal reminder service in 2006. 

My current focus is based around expanding our UK network and particularly our out-of-London colocation facilities. My project for the last year was to design and build our own secure data facility (which is now operational), with backhaul to London and on site diesel backup and UPS.  I’m currently in the process of procuring a second site.  

I’m driven by technology and how to make it work. I’m lucky to be able to indulge in this by ploughing back substantial investment into research and development, with 3 patents applications in the areas of telecoms, signaling and mesh networking and enjoying the challenge of making longer-term technology investments and predictions.

I’m still hands-on as an active SC cleared security consultant, providing vulnerability, security and disaster recovery advice to a variety of significant organisations.


My other active shareholdings, interests and directorships include : 
Bubblenets Ltd – a specialist wireless mesh networking company,
Telephony Services Ltd – a wholesale telecoms provider,
Coralbridge Ltd – a strategic telecoms operator
Beaumont Neale Properties ltd – an investment vehicle

Memberships

IET, RSc
RIPE 
ITSPA
Nominet UK
YABA - Yorkshire Association of Business Angels (providing investment and advice to Yorkshire based startups).

Interests

My new responsibility as a father!.  I’m also :   An avid kayaker (white water and sea).  A fell runner.  A motorcyclist.  A funk bass player. A helicopter enthusiast.