ICANN Announcements

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ICANN Concludes Successful India Meeting | Discussions on Internationalized Domain Names provide direction for progress

15 February 2008

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers put the wrap on its 31st International Public Meeting in New Delhi today after five days of discussions about the future of the Internet.

"These meetings are vital to ICANN's model of bottom-up, consensus driven policy making in action," said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's Board Chairman.

A total of 720 participants from 76 countries, including 290 participants from the host country India, took part in the meeting, and helped ICANN move forward on a number of discussions.

The ICANN board passed a number of resolutions at the meeting, including:

  • Directing staff to continue implementation work on New generic top-level domains, inform the GNSO and the public on progress made in implementation efforts, discuss some issues raised by the staff and Board regarding implementation with the GNSO Council, and provide information to the Board in a timely manner to enable the Board to discuss the recommendations and implementation issues and quickly determine a course of action for the introduction new gTLDs, with staff to provide an update at the Board workshop on 17 April 2008;
  • Asking ICANN's Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees to continue their ongoing collaborative efforts and commitment to recommend a course of action to the Board in a timely manner;
  • Have ICANN deploy IPv6 across its infrastructure and provide regular feedback to the community on progress and lessons learned;
  • Approval of the Framework and Principles on Accountability and Transparency;
  • Approval of a bylaw-change request from the At-Large Advisory Committee that will provide Regional At-Large Organizations with an important role in evaluating applications and increase transparency of the consideration of applications.

In addition a consultation was held on the midterm review of the Joint Project Agreement with the United States Department of Commerce.

"Today is the final day for public input to the midterm review, so I encourage everyone to make their voice heard," Dengate Thrush added.

Details on how to make a submission are on ICANN's homepage at http://www.icann.org or at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/frnotices/2007/ICANN_JPA_110207.html

"We also want to extend thanks on behalf of the entire community to our hosts from the Indian Government's Department of Information Technology and from the National Internet Exchange of India," said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN's President and CEO. " India has many lessons to offer in the IT realm – and especially in the work to develop IDNs. Hearing about these lessons and experiences has helped everyone move forward and build a multilingual Internet."

The full list of Board resolutions at the 31st International Public Meeting in New Delhi can be found at http://www.icann.org/minutes/resolutions-15feb08.htm.

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About ICANN:

ICANN is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers like domain names (like .org, .museum and country codes like .uk) and the addresses used in a variety of Internet protocols that help computers reach each other over the Internet. Careful management of these resources is vital to the Internet's operation, so ICANN's global stakeholders meet regularly to develop policies that ensure the Internet's ongoing security and stability. ICANN is an internationally organized, public benefit non-profit company. For more information please visit: www.icann.org .

Media Contacts:

Jason Keenan
Media Adviser, ICANN
Ph: +1 310 382 4004
E: jason.keenan@icann.org


International: Andrew Robertson
Edelman (London)
Ph: +44 7921 588 770
E: andrew.robertson@edelman.com