I recently arrived back from South Africa after having attended the 47th annual Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting in Durban. The following is an update and my impressions of developments that occurred that this meeting.

On the opening day of the ICANN conference, the highlight was the signing of the first four registry agreements with new generic top-level domain (gTLD) applicants. As we have known for months, all four signed registry agreements were to be for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), and include:

  • The Arabic word for “web”
  • The Russian word for “online”
  • The Russian word for “website”
  • The Chinese word for “game”

This was a huge milestone for the new gTLD program, and it is predicted that these could operating and accepting domain name registrations as early as late October or November of this year.

Shortly after the registry agreement signing ceremony, Fadi Chehadé, chief executive officer of ICANN, discussed a renewed focus to better integrate ICANN into the global framework of non-governmental organizations, governments and other entities in the Internet governance ecosystem. Emphasizing this approach, Chehadé introduced a pre-recorded video statement by Dr. Hamadoun Toure, International Telecommunication Union Secretary General, who shared his opinions about the cooperative roles of ICANN and ITU.