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New gTLDs now a month behind schedule

Kevin Murphy, April 28, 2012, 08:08:31 (UTC), Domain Policy

ICANN has announced yet another delay in its new generic top-level domains program.
Last night’s much-anticipated update on its efforts to deal with the fallout of the TLD Application System security bug merely deferred resolution of the problem for a week. Again.
The whole program is now essentially a month behind schedule.
Chief operating office Akram Atallah said in a statement:

ICANN will notify all applicants within the next seven business days whether our analysis shows they were affected by the technical glitch in the TLD application system.

Shortly after the notification process has been completed, we will announce the schedule for reopening the application system and completing the application period. We are mindful of the need to allow sufficient time during the reopening period for applicants to confirm the completeness of their submissions.

The seven business days for applicant notifications takes us to May 8.
It’s not clear whether TAS would reopen immediately after this, but I suspect we’re probably looking at a buffer of at least a day or two between the end of notifications and TAS coming back online.
ICANN has previously said that TAS will be open for five business days, to enable applicants to finish off their applications. This brings us to, at the very earliest, May 15.
The Big Reveal of the list of applications, I estimate, will come one to two weeks after that.
We’re essentially looking at a late May or early June finish to a process that should have ended in late April.
As a result, the entire timetable for evaluating, approving and delegating new gTLDs will likely also be pushed out by a month.
For applicants, the anticipated November 12 date for the completion of the first-batch Initial Evaluation phase is now likely to come some time in mid-December instead.
Unhelpfully, the deadlines for filing objections and requesting Extended Evaluation for first-batch applicants is now likely to fall around about January 1, 2013.
That’s assuming we do not see any more delays, of course, which I think would be optimistic.

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Comments (4)

  1. Philip Corwin says:

    “That’s assuming we do not see any more delays, of course, which I think would be optimistic”
    I am presuming that we will see more technical delays, nasty controversies, GAC objections, trademark contentions, newsworthy disputes between applicants for the same string (including whether a “community” application deisgned to trump the alliance/auction process is genuine) and, last but not least, litigation between applicants and aggainst ICANN (notwithstanding the application proviso that one is precluded from suing ICANN).
    It will likely be a very bumpy ride.

  2. Tom G says:

    Likely first out are uncontested brands and capital cities.

  3. Nimoy says:

    Yawn. Who cares? They are all going to crash and burn anyways. Stick wtih .com.

  4. blehblehbleh says:

    Yawn today
    .zzz tomorrow

Leave a Reply to Philip Corwin