John Demco
.COM Registry Agreement Renewed – ICANN has approved the renewal of the .com registry agreement with Verisign. The contract term extends through November 30, 2018.
New ICANN President and CEO Announced – At a press conference in Prague on June 22, Fadi Chehadé was announced as ICANN’s President and CEO, as of October 1. With Rod Beckstrom’s term as President and CEO concluding, ICANN Chief Operating Officer Akram Atallah will serve as interim President and CEO. The ICANN Board’s May 31 decision was kept confidential until the public announcement.
New gTLD Digital Archery Process Cancelled – ICANN has terminated the “digital archery” process it had previously adopted to group the new gTLD applications into batches. The program had recently been
suspended due to a technical issue.
IANA Contract Awarded to ICANN – The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has awarded the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) contract to ICANN. The IANA functions include maintenance of the DNS root zone and a number of other technical services fundamental to the operation of the Internet. The contract has a term of three years with two separate two-year option periods for a total of seven years. Earlier this year, NTIA had reissued the contract RFP because it had received no proposals that met its requirements.
Picks To Click
- CIRA has begun an initiative to facilitate the development of more Internet eXchange Points (IXPs) across Canada.
- AFNIC has been appointed as the registry for France’s .fr domain for a new five-year term.
- Having recently introduced Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) to .fr and a number of other TLDs, AFNIC has published the results of the two-month sunrise period and the first few days of general registration.
Timeline
- Tue, Jul 31 – Mon, Aug 13: call for Member Nominees for CIRA Board election
- Thu, Aug 23 – Thu, Sep 6: shows of support for Member Nominees for CIRA election
- Tue, Sep 11 – Tue, Sep 18: online forum for CIRA Board of Directors election
- Wed, Sep 19 – Wed, Sep 26: CIRA Board of Directors election
- Sun, Oct 14 – Fri, Oct 19: ICANN meetings in Toronto