Policy Recommendations for Next gTLD Round Inch Forward

whether changes are needed to the way the 2012 round of new gTLDs was handled, Julie Hedlund, who provides GNSO policy support to the panel, said at the Middle East DNS Forum in Dubai. The working group started "from the assumption of the status quo": If the existing scheme worked well, it won't recommend modifications. Several topics under discussion are of particular interest to the Middle East, Hedlund noted. One is the applicant support program, which wasn't used much in the 2012 round because of poor outreach efforts among other things, she said. The group is examining whether some potential candidates for support might not see the business case for applying for new gTLDs or whether the environment they're working in might not be ready to support a domain name registry. Other relevant issues include concerns about how community-based gTLD applications are evaluated, and inconsistencies between GNSO policy recommendations for geographic names at the top level and how those policies were carried out in the last round. DNS Africa encountered several roadblocks in its quest for gTLDs such as .africa and .durban, said founder Calvin Browne. His organization didn't qualify for applicant support, which created financial problems, and there were issues with "Americanisms," such as insurance requirements that South Africa's insurance industry didn't understand, and that South African and U.S. banking systems couldn't talk to each other, Browne said. For the next round, ICANN fees will be a "major hindrance": A $20,000 annual fee for a gTLD with 3,000 domain name registrations works out to around $8 per name, which hampers innovation.