Recent Posts
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- Amazon planning new push into registrar market?
- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
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- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
- Domain universe grows despite .com drag
ICANN expecting to approve most new gTLDs?
Good news for new gTLD applicants?
ICANN appears to be assuming that the vast majority of applications will pass their evaluations and make it at least as far as pre-delegation testing, judging from recent comments.
Of the 1,400-odd unique strings being applied for, ICANN reckons that “close to the maximum” will need to be tested before being added to the DNS root.
The hint came in a Q&A with respondents to ICANN’s pre-delegation testing provider RFP published yesterday.
With added emphasis, here’s what ICANN just said:
Question 7: Can ICANN provide a definitive statement of the anticipated minimum number of pre-delegation tests?
The total number of applied-for strings that will be approved is unknown at this point. Therefore, we cannot assert the minimum number of registries to be tested but only the maximum: 1,400. We expect that the actual numbers of registries tested should be close to the maximum.
It’s a positive sign for applicants, but there are obviously some big unknowns in the process, most notably Governmental Advisory Committee interventions, which are a little under a week away.
On the negative side, ICANN seems to be digging its heels in on the number of pre-delegation tests that will be required, despite recent requests from applicants to streamline the process:
Question 17: Is it possible to execute a single test per Back-End Registry Service Provider (as this would limit the requirement to about 80 such tests)?
The AGB [Applicant Guidebook] specifies one Pre-Delegation Test per Registry Operator (contracted party to ICANN).
This appears to mean that multiple applications using Verisign or Afilias, for example, as their back-ends will have to be individually tested, despite possible duplicative work.
Will the GAC Early warnings be publicly published?
Are people really still pursuing silly gtld’s? Um…why?