[council] FW: Proposal to form a Joint ALAC - GNSO WG "to develop a sustainable approach to providing support to applicants requiring assistance in applying for and operating new gTLDs" in response to the ICANN Board Resolution 20 at the Nairobi

[Bruce Tonkin]

Hello Rafik,

>>  the IDN ccTLD is good example but I am not sure that there is a fee for the fast track process?http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/ . we shouldn't also be worried for the technical and operational side as many of those countries were preparing for long time to have IDNs.


There are some fees for IDN-ccTLD fast track.

From: http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/idn-cctld-requestors-manual-16nov09-en.pdf

"Payment of the fee (USD $26,000) for the processing of a request in the String Evaluation Stage is expected but not mandatory. ICANN will submit a notice of this amount to you. If you are unable to pay this fee you can contact ICANN stating the reason for the inability to pay the fee.

Payment of an annual contribution to ICANN’s cost of operations in the amount 1‐3% of the revenue from the registrations of domain names within the selected TLD is expected but not mandatory. ICANN will submit a notice of the structure of this amount to you on an annual basis."

Note that the application fee above only covers the evaluation of the string.  Whereas the policy for new gTLDs requires technical and operational evaluation, along with mechanisms for rights protection mechanisms etc.   The legal costs and economists around new gTLDS have also been far greater (millions) - so the more the community demands with respect to work on new gTLDs, the higher the costs for ICANN that need to be recovered in some way.

Once a string is selected, then an IDN-ccTLD goes through the normal IANA ccTLD delegation process - which is essentially proving that the applicant has the support of the local community.   (it is a little like the community evaluation component of the new gTLD process where there is contention between applicants).   There are some technical tests applied before a ccTLD is placed into the root, and generally I believe that IANA does some due diligence on the technical capabilities of the applicant.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin