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ICANN won’t vote on new gTLDs for another year

Kevin Murphy, September 24, 2021, 08:28:05 (UTC), Domain Policy

Those of you champing at the bit for an opportunity to apply for some more new gTLDs have a longer wait ahead of you than you might have hoped, following a vote of the ICANN board of directors last week.

The board has asked ICANN staff to kick off the latest — but not last — stage of the long-running runway to the next application window, but it will take around 10 months and cost millions.

On September 12, the board gave CEO Göran Marby $9 million from the 2012 round’s war chest and told him to kick off the so-called Operational Design Phase of the New Generic Top-Level Domain Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (SubPro).

What this means is that ICANN will take the community-created policy recommendations approved by the GNSO Council in January and try to figure how they specifically could be implemented, before the board decides whether they should be implemented.

The ODP will “assess the potential risks, anticipated costs, resource requirements, timelines, and other matters related to implementation” the board resolution states.

For example, while the SubPro final report calls for an outreach campaign prior to opening the application window, the ODP scoping document (pdf) asks what materials would be needed to be produced and how much they would cost.

The scoping paper comprises dozens and dozens of questions like this, over 15 pages. I started counting them but got bored.

ICANN chair Maarten Botterman said the ODP will provide the board “with relevant materials to facilitate the Board’s determination whether the recommendations are in the best interest of the ICANN community or ICANN”.

While the resolution says the ODP should be completed “within 10 months”, that clock starts ticking when the Marby “initiates” the process, and that does not appear to have happened.

Given that, and ICANN’s habitual tardiness, I’d guess we’re looking at closer to a year before the Org has a document ready to put before the board for consideration.

With all the other stuff that needs to happen following the board’s approval, we’re probably talking about a 2024 application window. That would be 12 years after the last round and 11 years later than the next round was originally promised.

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Comments (4)

  1. Skiel says:
    September 24, 2021 at 8:13 pm

    Off topic but I thought you’d be interested.
    As we know ens supports tlds that have dnssec.
    Most TLD’s qualify,
    BUT when it comes to cctld .US.is one of the very few.

    ENS integration
    ccTLDs
    By far the largest category is country-code TLDs. The following 133 ccTLDs lack the necessary DNSSEC support and will not be available for DNSSEC integration:
    ae, ai, al, ao, aq, as, ba, bb, bd, bf, bh, bi, bj, bn, bo, br, bs, bv, cd, cf, cg, ch, ci, ck, cm, cu, cv, cw, cy, cz, dj, dm, do, dz, ec, eg, er, et, fj, fk, fm, ga, gb, ge, gf, gg, gh, gm, gp, gq, gt, gu, gw, gy, hm, ht, im, iq, ir, it, je, jm, jo, kh, km, kn, kp, kw, kz, li, ls, ly, mc, md, mh, mk, ml, mo, mp, mq, mr, ms, mt, mu, mv, mw, mz, ne, ng, ni, np, nr, nu, om, pa, pf, pg, ph, pk, pn, ps, py, qa, rs, rw, sd, sk, sl, sm, so, sr, ss, st, sv, sy, sz, tc, td, tg, tj, tk, to, tr, tz, ua, uz, va, ve, vg, vi, vu, ye, zw

    Reply

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