ICANN staff narrows new domain options

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has zeroed in on 10 new top-level domains, pending a vote of its board of directors that is scheduled for Thursday.

ICANN's staff released on Friday its analysis of the 191 top-level domains interested parties have proposed in recent weeks. The report identifies 10 top-level domains that are the strongest contenders, including .biz, .web and .nom. Two others - .museum and .health - remain in the running, but the report outlined concerns with these proposals.

Eliminated from the process were proposals that would segregate Web content for children and adults with top-level domains including .kids and .xxx. ICANN also recommended against proposals for restricted commercial domains such as .fin for financial institutions, .travel for air transport companies and .pro for professionals.

In a surprise move, ICANN also eliminated proposals for telephony-related domains, including .tel and .one, in deference to a request from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). ITU sent a letter to ICANN on Nov. 1 asserting that the intersection of telephone numbering and the Domain Name System (DNS) is complex and requires more technical analysis.

ICANN also ruled out a proposal from Novell for a .dir domain for directory services information, citing concerns that Novell's proposal did not consider directory systems from competing vendors.

At a press conference held Friday, ICANN's staff emphasized that its board of directors has the authority to overrule the staff's recommendations and choose whatever domains it prefers. The report was created by five ICANN staff members and eight outside advisors.

"We followed the board's instructions in reviewing these proposals, but they have the ultimately authority to take action on this," says ICANN President Mike Roberts.

ICANN's board is expected to choose between four and 12 new top-level domains next week, with names under these domains becoming available in the second quarter of 2001.

ICANN observers criticized the report for failing to clarify the technical and financial criteria used to whittle down the proposals.

"ICANN does not give a standard to which technical applications should rise, yet they are shooting certain applications down for being without technical merit," says Mikki Barry, president of the Domain Name Rights Coalition.

"ICANN is supposed to be focusing on the technical issues of the Internet, not reviewing business models," Barry adds.

In early October, ICANN received 44 valid proposals from companies and consortia seeking to become registries of new top-level domains. Each proposal was accompanied by a $50,000 application fee. Many of the proposals offered multiple top-level domains, resulting in a pool of 191 options from which ICANN can choose.

ICANN's staff reviewed the technical, business and financial strength of the proposals, and the results of that review were posted on its Web site early Friday morning.

ICANN narrowed the 14 proposals to seven finalists, all proposing .web and .biz. The two strongest proposals appear to be from Afilias, a consortium of 19 domain name registrars, including VeriSign's Network Solutions subsidiary; and KDD Internet Solutions, a Japanese telecommunications company that has teamed with Network Solutions. Network Solutions long held a monopoly for domain name registrations and currently is the sole registry for names in the .com, .net and .org domains and the top registrar for names in these domains.o