ICANN Announcements

Read ICANN Announcements to stay informed of the latest policymaking activities, regional events, and more.

ICANN Opens 31st International Public Meeting in New Delhi | Topics include Internet internationalization, increasing domain names choices

11 February 2008

NEW DELHI , INDIA: Internet issues from around the world are front and center in India as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers opened its 31st International Public Meeting today in New Delhi.

“This year is an important one for the future of ICANN. The U.S. government is in the middle of its Midterm Review of its Joint Project Agreement with ICANN, and we’re arguing it’s time to take the final step to originally envisioned private sector model for ICANN,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN’s Board Chairman. “In fact the public comment period closes on the final day of this meeting – so we expect plenty of discussion about this in New Delhi, and we will be encouraging everyone who believes in the ICANN model of coordination not control to make their thoughts known.”

The New Delhi meeting is the first of the three public ICANN meetings in 2008. These meetings are crucial because ICANN's polices are created through a bottom-up, transparent process involving Internet Community.

“There wlll be key discussions at the New Delhi meting about our ongoing work to develop a new application and approval model for new generic top-level domains or gTLDs, and our work on Internationalized Domain Names or IDNs, which will mean the languages and scripts of most of the world could be used to write domain names,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. “Because the ICANN model is based on bottom-up, consensus-driven policy making, these global meetings are important ways of making sure ICANN is on track and meeting the needs of the wider Internet community.”

Discussions around IDNs will include two workshops, one on the Fast-Track Process to find a way to represent territory identifications in local languages as country-code top-level domains as quickly as possible in the areas of highest need, and another on the pioneering work India is doing on IDNs in Indian Languages and Scripts.

Other meeting highlights include:

  • A workshop on ICANN’s planning for what happens if a Registrar were to cease operating
  • IT Success Story of India session with some of the leading figures from the Indian IT sector.
  • An open and public ICANN Board Meeting.

The complete schedule for ICANN's 31st meeting, as well as links to webcast sessions and our public participation website, can be found at: http://delhi.icann.org/

-30-

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