OpenRegistry gets €2m financing

New gTLD registry services provider OpenRegistry has secured €2 million ($2.7 million) in financing, the company announced yesterday.
The amount will be “spread over the coming year” and comes from, among other existing investors, Australian registrar Instra.
The Benelux-based company will also see investment from the Luxembourgish government under a ‘Young Innovative Enterprises’ scheme.
OpenRegistry is to provide back-end services for up to 19 new gTLDs and currently manages the registry for .sx, the recently launch ccTLD for Sint Maarten.

Nine more new gTLD contracts signed

ICANN signed nine more new gTLD Registry Agreements yesterday.
The contracts cover .kiwi, .futbol, .kitchen, .directory, .diamonds, .tips, .today, .enterprises, and .photography.
All but .kiwi, which will be run by Dot Kiwi Ltd, were Donuts’ applications.
ICANN now has Registry Agreements with registries to manage 45 new gTLDs.

dotShabaka Diary — Day 14, Writing an RRA

The fourteenth installment of dotShabaka Registry’s journal, charting its progress towards becoming one of the first new gTLDs to go live, written by general manager Yasmin Omer.

Tuesday 24 September 2013
We are trying to determine the best process to finalise a Registry Registrar Agreement (RRA) that is satisfactory to both dotShabaka Registry and our registrars.
According to our agreement with ICANN, we must use a uniform non-discriminatory RRA with all registrars. This makes it challenging in the new gTLD landscape; we have to get it right the first time or we face being bogged down in a clunky amendment procedure.
This is not an easy concept to implement, but dotShabaka Registry and other early launchers must address this soon. It seems there are at least four ways dotShabaka Registry could do this:
1. Wait for ICANN to develop a boilerplate RRA that incorporates the various new gTLD requirements.
2. Negotiate an agreement with the biggest registrar/s and expect that all other registrars will be happy with the result.
3. Put an Agreement out for public comment and request that the Registrars come together with a consensus view.
4. Wait for the Registrar community to generate an agreement for Registries to use.
We don’t expect ICANN’s Automated Registrar Onboarding System (AROS) to be ready for the launch of our TLD.
We would love to hear your thoughts here. Can you think of another pathway to finalise a RRA for the first new gTLDs launched?

Read previous and future diary entries here.

One IE pass, one fail this week

ICANN is down to 18 new gTLD applications in Initial Evaluation now, after one pass and one failure this week.
The pass is the dot-brand .lplfinancial, applied for by LPL Financial, a US-based broker. The company already owns the arguably better domain lpl.com.
The failure, which is eligible for Extended Evaluation, is Top Level Domain Holdings’ geographic bid for .roma, a city TLD for Rome, Italy.
The application failed on geographic grounds, meaning TLDH seems to have failed to provide sufficient evidence of government support or non-objection.
It’s TLDH’s final IE result and the only one of its 70 applications to fail to achieve a passing score.

New gTLD plans November 30 sunrise

I-Registry, which signed an ICANN Registry Agreement for the new gTLD .onl this week, plans to launch its Sunrise period on November 30, according to the company.
It’s the first date for a new gTLD Sunrise period I’ve come across to date, though it is of course an informal target rather than a firm commitment.
ICANN has signed contracts covering a few dozen gTLDs but as yet none have been delegated. As anyone who has been following dotShabaka’s diary on DI will know, there’s still a lot of uncertainty
.onl, which is short for “online”, is expected to be an open gTLD with no registration restrictions.
I-Registry plans to donate a portion of its profits to charity.

dotShabaka Diary — Day 13, Questions, Questions

The thirteenth installment of dotShabaka Registry’s journal, charting its progress towards becoming one of the first new gTLDs to go live, written by general manager Yasmin Omer.

Friday 20 September 2013
The new gTLD webinar on 19 September was very well attended with over 200 people on the call. Due to time constraints ICANN did not answer questions previously submitted by email so we thought it would be useful to share them with you here:

• 1. What issues do ICANN need to resolve before the delegation processes will commence for those TLDs that have completed PDT?
  a) What are the processes and schedules for resolution of these issues?
  b) Will this information be made available to Applicants to assist with launch planning?
• 2. The number of Trademark records in the Arabic script in the TMCH is very low – the last information that Deloitte/IBM/ICANN published in early July was that there were 13 trademarks records in the Arabic script in the TMCH. No update on IDN trademark records in the TMCH has been provided since.
  a. Why is this information not publically available to assist registry operators with launch planning?
  b. What is the plan to improve TMCH IDN numbers and what are the forecasts?
• 3. Only 26 Registrars have signed the 2013 RAA. To expedite the on-boarding process and enable a global network of Registrars for the TLD launch, can ICANN remove the requirement that a registrar have executed the 2013 RAA in order to obtain a registration token for the TMDB? This will allow Registrar testing to proceed whilst the 2013 RAA is being executed/negotiated.
• 4. Can you please provide a specific date for distribution of the PR kit for new gTLD registries who are planning launch activities as mentioned by Christine Willett in her recent video interview?
• 5. When will ICANN update its website with the list of registrars that have completed TMCH Integration Testing as promised in section 1.5 of the 6 August RPM Requirements Document?
• 6. When will the Registry Reporting Interface required as per Specification 3 be in production rather than OT&E?
• 7. ICANN staff mentioned that there may be a call to discuss finalising the URS Technical Requirements Document
  a. When will this call occur?
  b. When will the URS Technical Requirements Document be finalised?
  c. Must the URS Technical Requirements Document be finalised prior to the delegation or sunrise of the first new gTLDs?
• 8. Is the CZDA operational and ready for the first new gTLDs which will be delegated in the next month?
• 9. Can IBM create a permanent OT&E for the TMCH that allows complete end to end testing and includes all the functionality found in the production environment?

We look forward to ICANN will publishing responses to these questions in the Q&A typically distributed a few days after completion.

Read previous and future diary entries here.

Google signs first new gTLD contract

Google has signed its first Registry Agreement with ICANN, covering the new gTLD .みんな.
The string means “everyone” in Japanese. It had priority number 34.
Google proposes to use it as an open TLD, available for anyone to register names in.
Signed by Google subsidiary Charleston Road Registry, it’s the 34th new gTLD contract ICANN has executed.
Google has 96 new gTLD applications remaining. One of them, for .search, is still Initial Evaluation.

dotShabaka Diary — Day 12, Welcome to ICANN

The twelfth installment of dotShabaka Registry’s journal, charting its progress towards becoming one of the first new gTLDs to go live, written by general manager Yasmin Omer.

Wednesday 18 September 2013
The شبكة. team met with marketing and PR agencies in the Middle East today to make plans for launch.
 
They were shocked that there was so much uncertainty around a global program that in the words of ICANN’s Christine Willett “… will have the first new gTLD launched and in production by the end of this calendar year.”
 
The agencies were astounded that after such a significant investment we still have no idea when شبكة. can be launched.
 
We welcomed them to the world of new gTLDs.

Read previous and future diary entries here.

dotShabaka Diary — Day 11, 2013 RAA issues

The eleventh installment of dotShabaka Registry’s journal, charting its progress towards becoming one of the first new gTLDs to go live, written by general manager Yasmin Omer.

Tuesday 17 September 2013
As شبكة. gets closer to launch, signing up Registrars becomes ever more critical and we have started discussions with potential partners across three continents. To participate in Sunrise, Registrars must have already completed two steps: 1) Signed the 2013 RAA; and 2) Completed TMDB Accreditation.
To date, around 20 Registrars have signed the 2013 RAA according to the InterNIC website.
However, because Registrars cannot access the TMDB environment until they have signed the 2013 RAA, even fewer have started TMDB accreditation. Many of those that have signed the RAA have been frustrated by TMDB OTE access problems.
Is there any official ICANN database where Registries can confirm Registrar TMDB Accreditation?
Registries are locked out of the TMDB environment until the 2013 RAA is signed. Why not let Registries access the TMDB as needed (now) to accelerate readiness for the launch of IDN gTLDs?
And why aren’t ICANN or Deloitte publishing TMCH numbers for non-English trademarks? How can we decide whether the Sunrise Phase should be 30 days or more if we don’t know the numbers? Why not publish the forecasts and let the Registries decide how to optimise launch phases for their businesses model?

Read previous and future diary entries here.

Coming soon: phone numbers in .tel

Will companies defensively register their phone numbers? Telnic is to start selling long numeric .tel domain names for the first time, so we’re about to find out.
The company plans to lift the longstanding restriction on numeric domains of eight characters or longer on October 15, according to a press release (pdf) this morning:

Registrants wishing to register strings such as 00442074676450.tel or 0207-467-6450.tel will be able to do so through ICANN-accredited Registrars from 15:00 GMT on Tuesday 15th October.
“Registrants now have an increased choice of registering a .tel name or a .tel number under which they can publish all types of contact information online,” said Khashayar Mahdavi, CEO of Telnic. “This means that if the customer knows either the business name or telephone number for a business, it can be reached online quickly in a mobile-friendly way.”

Telnic expects numeric .tel domains to cost the same as regular .tel domains, which varies by registrar but can be as low as about $15. There’s not going to be any special sunrise period.
Telnic has had the ability to do this since early 2011, when ICANN approved its Registry Services Evaluation Process request to lift its original ban on numeric-only second-level domains.
The RSEP was not without controversy. Telnic, remember, was one of two applicants for .tel back in 2003, and it won partly because its application committed the company to avoiding numerals.
There had been concern expressed by the International Telecommunications Union and others that phone number .tel domains might interfere with ENUM-based numbering schemes.
Those concerns had largely dried up by the time Telnic submitted its RSEP in 2010, when the only complaint came, weirdly, from Go Daddy.