Drewbert
25th December 2012, 12:34 PM
I find it fairly confusing - certainly difficult to find any information on ICANN's site to give any clues about dates.
The clearest information I've found about what happens and when appears at http://www.circleid.com/posts/20121218_the_results_of_the_icann_bingo_are_in/
Formal objections. The new gTLD program allows for objections to be made against applied-for strings. The period for this ends on March 13, 2013.
OK. Clear so far.
Contention sets. Where the same string has been applied-for several times by different applicants, these go into a "contention set". There are several ways for these to be sorted out, but the end result has to be that only one applicant per string remains.
IDN Contention sets:
Apps 51 and 60 for 信息
Apps 54 and 57 for 娱乐
Apps 79 and 1772 for 广东
Apps 45 and 98 for 微博
Apps 15 and 28 for 网址
Apps 17 and 31 for 网店
Apps 99 and 106 for 网站
So those applications may be held up after the objection period ends while the applicants either negotiate or go to auction.
But do contention sets also include variants? That might delay a few more IDN's as well?
Initial evaluation. ICANN will release the results of its initial evaluation of new gTLD applications after the close of the objection period. Applications for IDN strings will be given priority.
OK. Not sure WHY the results for initial evaluation are the FIRST thing to be done in "priority draw" order.
So in this announcement (or series of announcements?) some strings will fail initial evaluation, so they'll go into a different queue. Fingers crossed that all the Verisign/PIR/Afilias variant applications clear this hurdle immediately - they have the advantage of being existing registries so hopefully nothing but a paid objection would prevent them from doing so.
80 new gTLDs a week
ICANN will begin contract negotiations with applicants that are free of any contention, technical or objection issues (the others will have to wait until those issues are resolved). If those applicants are willing to sign the ICANN new gTLD contract as-is, they will immediately proceed to the next steps. Contract negotiations are allowed, but will of course take more time.
You guess is as good as mine as to which of the new IDN's will be happy with the standard contract. It is possible that Verisign/PIR/Affilias MIGHT be more likely to want changes, because they already know what it's all about?
All applicants with a contract agreement can then make an appointment to be "pre-delegation tested", where their readiness to operate a TLD will be examined. ICANN will do this at the rate of around 20 appointments a week, or 80 a month, and will use the prioritization draw order.
Right. It's pretty much a "given" that Verisign/PIR/Affilias will sail through this bit, as will the ccTLD registries that have IDN applications in (for non-ccTLD strings - CNNIC etc). Other may well fail, causing them to have to go away and fix things before doing another PDT, so this could allow some queue-jumping by the variant apps.
Once an applicant has passed, then ICANN will sign their new gTLD contract. This process will only begin after April 2013's Beijing ICANN meeting and once again, ICANN will process applicants at the same rate of around 80 to 85 gTLDs a month.
No information anywhere about how long it might take an applicant to pass this pre-delegation testing. Once Verisign/PIR/Affilias has passed their first PDT, do they have to go through it all again, or do they get a "credit", allowing them to go straight from contract negotiation (if any) to contract signing in the same meeting? If so, the variant delegations could queue-jump to delegation application quite significantly.
It also seems rather inefficient to have (say) the Verisign signing team at ICANN's office (having flown all the way from Zurich or Luxembourg?, cough hack) and then have to come back days later to sign other contracts that are actually ready to be signed, because they're not requiring any contract negotiation, and have already passed the PDT.
Discuss.
The clearest information I've found about what happens and when appears at http://www.circleid.com/posts/20121218_the_results_of_the_icann_bingo_are_in/
Formal objections. The new gTLD program allows for objections to be made against applied-for strings. The period for this ends on March 13, 2013.
OK. Clear so far.
Contention sets. Where the same string has been applied-for several times by different applicants, these go into a "contention set". There are several ways for these to be sorted out, but the end result has to be that only one applicant per string remains.
IDN Contention sets:
Apps 51 and 60 for 信息
Apps 54 and 57 for 娱乐
Apps 79 and 1772 for 广东
Apps 45 and 98 for 微博
Apps 15 and 28 for 网址
Apps 17 and 31 for 网店
Apps 99 and 106 for 网站
So those applications may be held up after the objection period ends while the applicants either negotiate or go to auction.
But do contention sets also include variants? That might delay a few more IDN's as well?
Initial evaluation. ICANN will release the results of its initial evaluation of new gTLD applications after the close of the objection period. Applications for IDN strings will be given priority.
OK. Not sure WHY the results for initial evaluation are the FIRST thing to be done in "priority draw" order.
So in this announcement (or series of announcements?) some strings will fail initial evaluation, so they'll go into a different queue. Fingers crossed that all the Verisign/PIR/Afilias variant applications clear this hurdle immediately - they have the advantage of being existing registries so hopefully nothing but a paid objection would prevent them from doing so.
80 new gTLDs a week
ICANN will begin contract negotiations with applicants that are free of any contention, technical or objection issues (the others will have to wait until those issues are resolved). If those applicants are willing to sign the ICANN new gTLD contract as-is, they will immediately proceed to the next steps. Contract negotiations are allowed, but will of course take more time.
You guess is as good as mine as to which of the new IDN's will be happy with the standard contract. It is possible that Verisign/PIR/Affilias MIGHT be more likely to want changes, because they already know what it's all about?
All applicants with a contract agreement can then make an appointment to be "pre-delegation tested", where their readiness to operate a TLD will be examined. ICANN will do this at the rate of around 20 appointments a week, or 80 a month, and will use the prioritization draw order.
Right. It's pretty much a "given" that Verisign/PIR/Affilias will sail through this bit, as will the ccTLD registries that have IDN applications in (for non-ccTLD strings - CNNIC etc). Other may well fail, causing them to have to go away and fix things before doing another PDT, so this could allow some queue-jumping by the variant apps.
Once an applicant has passed, then ICANN will sign their new gTLD contract. This process will only begin after April 2013's Beijing ICANN meeting and once again, ICANN will process applicants at the same rate of around 80 to 85 gTLDs a month.
No information anywhere about how long it might take an applicant to pass this pre-delegation testing. Once Verisign/PIR/Affilias has passed their first PDT, do they have to go through it all again, or do they get a "credit", allowing them to go straight from contract negotiation (if any) to contract signing in the same meeting? If so, the variant delegations could queue-jump to delegation application quite significantly.
It also seems rather inefficient to have (say) the Verisign signing team at ICANN's office (having flown all the way from Zurich or Luxembourg?, cough hack) and then have to come back days later to sign other contracts that are actually ready to be signed, because they're not requiring any contract negotiation, and have already passed the PDT.
Discuss.