John Kranenburg has been named as the new chairman of SPAN, the telecommunications' Service Provider Industry Association. He takes over from former chairman and Broadband Advisory Group member Phil Singleton who will step down at the association's annual general meeting on September 5 2003.

Kranenburg has been in IT&T for more than 30 years in marketing and management, business set-up and operations, strategic planning, restructuring and change management as well as other senior executive and leadership roles and since 2002, has worked in a variety of representational and consulting roles.

He was executive director for Fujitsu Australia for five years until 2002 during which revenues increased from $74 million to $300 million. Before that he was MD of Nortel Australia and earlier was general manager, Nortel Canada and vice president, Bell Communications Systems.

Kranenburg is a member of the Industry Advisory Board for CSIRO's ICT sector and contributed to the recently completed Electronics Industry Action Agenda report as the chairman of its research and development working group. He holds a Bachelor of Science (Engineering), from Queens University, Kingston, and an MBA from the University of Ottawa.

Singleton, reflecting on his five years in the chairman's role of SPAN, said significant progress had been made.

"SPAN, with help from ACIF (Australian Communication Industry Forum) and the industry was able to create a wholesale culture that now supports one of the fastest growing sectors in telecommunications," he said.

Singleton said the establishment of SPAN's BroadbandXchange Project has been highly successful in providing a platform "for leading industry and government supporters to demonstrate the benefits of broadband to the market".

SPAN is a non-profit organisation that implements collaborative industry initiatives for telecommunication service providers. Members include carriers, carriage service providers and content providers and their support organisations such as equipment and technology suppliers, consultants, legal and professional services companies.