Ishtiaque Omar

Ish is a partner in Webb Henderson’s telecommunications, media and technology practice. He works at the intersection of law and digital transformation. He has focused on this intersection for two decades, building on degrees in computer science and law. His key clients choose him repeatedly for their most critical projects.

Ish helps telecoms operators and digital infrastructure builders buy and sell complex things: businesses, assets, capacity and access services.

On the deal side, that means carve-outs and partial sales to pension funds, infrastructure investors and private equity — like the creation and sale of New Zealand mobile infrastructure company Connexa and data centre operator Ten Peaks. In such deals, the critical path is in charting tacit workflows and dependencies, converting flexible internal relationships into robust customer–supplier interfaces, and aligning management, board, and operations perspectives on value.

On the commercial contracts side, Ish negotiates long-term wholesale and access arrangements that withstand the test of time, lasting decades, allocating risk efficiently and absorbing multiple generations of technological change. He is the lead external adviser to Australia’s national broadband network company, nbn co, on contracts worth in excess of $5 billion in annual revenues — and on its long-term Special Access Undertaking to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Advising on essential services that underpin the national economy and daily life means that Ish is a trusted voice on security of critical infrastructure, data processing, network resilience and universal service.

And as digital infrastructure is increasingly harnessed to deliver the unprecedented transformations brought on by artificial intelligence, Ish advises on digital infrastructure across connectivity, data centre development, neo-clouds and and cloud compute. Ish also advises on the development, procurement, commercialisation and governance of artificial intelligence systems — building AI governance frameworks and contracting frameworks for major corporates, negotiating AI commitments up and down supply chains where the leverage of upstream model and cloud suppliers sets the limits, and advising on the shift to AI-centric operating platforms.

Ish also advises the pioneers of trusted digital identity and credentialing ecosystems, and digital platforms transforming content consumption and entertainment.

Beyond Australia and New Zealand, Ish has worked on regulatory, commercial and corporate projects for telecoms operators, digital infrastructure investors and regulators across South-East Asia, the Middle East and North America.

Ish has been listed in Chambers Asia-Pacific for the last several years. He joined Webb Henderson in 2011 and became a partner in 2016.

What people say about Ish

[Ish] combines excellent legal advisory and contract drafting skills with phenomenal industry and technological knowledge.