Directi Joins the new gTLD Gold Rush

India's Directi Group has finally thrown its hat in the ring, creating a new outfit that will manage new gTLD applications from prospective clients with ARI Registry Services(formerly AusRegistry) as its Registry Services Provider.

Directi Group is a giant player in the web/Domains Industry with outfits such as reseller network ResellerClub, Indian domain registrar Big Rock,  Domain Registry/Registrar solutions provider Logic Boxes, web services industry research and statistics arm Webhosting.info and .pw ccTLD registry. With Radix, Directi will be offering an almost complete package of DNS services.

It's not yet been revealed which new gTLD strings Directi will apply for on behalf of clients.

According to PR,

ARI Registry Services has announced it has been appointed as the exclusive registry services provider for Radix, a new entity within the Directi Group, that will be focused on obtaining and running new generic TLDs.

“The Directi Group runs multiple successful businesses in the web services space including ResellerClub, LogicBoxes, BigRock and WebHosting.info.”

“Under the arrangement, Radix will aim to secure Top-Level Domains, under ICANN’s program to expand the Internet’s addressing system.”

“ARI Registry Services will provide back-end registry and technical consulting services to Radix.”
 Adrian Kinderis, CEO of ARI Registry Services, welcomed the appointment.

“This is one of the largest and most enterprising new Top-Level Domain initiatives ever announced,” Mr Kinderis said. “ARI Registry Services shares the entrepreneurial spirit shown by Radix and this latest appointment shows we are uniquely placed to support entrepreneurs seeking to tap into the multi-billion dollar domain name industry.”

“Radix needed a registry solution that is capable of handling high volumes and millions of domain names. They also required an operator with expertise, security, reliability and entrepreneurial grit. That’s why ARI Registry Services was selected as the successful candidate.”

“Directi runs some of the largest and most successful domain name registrars and web hosting companies in the world and I’m proud they have selected ARI Registry Services to support their ambitious new Top-Level Domain plans. This latest client win not only positions us as a leader in the registry services space, but reinforces the fact that you don’t have to be an existing gTLD registry in order to be successful in this program. The game is certainly changing.”

Bhavin Turakhia, Founder of Radix, said ARI Registry Services was clearly the candidate for the project following an extensive evaluation process.

“Directi is well known for breeding and nurturing highly successful business models and our plans for the new Top-Level Domain program are no different,” Bhavin said. “We have set ambitious goals as part of this new Top-Level Domain project and as such we went to the market seeking a provider with the flexibility to handle our demanding business requirements and the technical capability to guarantee streamlined operation. We found many registry providers were not capable of adjusting their offerings to suit our unique project. This is why we selected ARI Registry Services for this project because their approach to business mirrors ours.”

“The exact TLD strings Radix will apply for with ARI Registry Services support will remain confidential until the May 1^st public unveil."


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Europe's "Ethnic" New gTLD Initiatives

Perhaps the new gTLD Initiative is Repartitioning Europe along ethnic lines?
An observation: A look at some of the expected community applications from Europe for new gTLDs suggest that populations with strongest national aspirations or endangered cultures or national pride in Europe are likely to apply for new gTLDs. The new gTLDs program is reviving "the tribe" in the European :), perhaps? The good thing is that it's also providing an opportunity for endangered languages and cultures to create lasting namespaces on the internet for preserving their cultures and creating unique content targeted at their communities.

Africa, with its over 3000 cultures and arbitrary borders that separate cultures into various administrative regions could have benefited hugely from the program, if only the application fee was $15,000 :) Anyway, Africa will still have a DotAfrica!

Otherwise, let's have a look at Europe's "ethnic new gTLD initiatives":

New gTLDs Initiatives from France:

.BZH(dotBZH)   For the Breton Language or Brittany North west France. The new Top Level Domain  is directed at Breton entrepreneurs, artists, volunteers and Internet users.
.BOURGOGNE(dotBourbgogne)  For the Burgundian Region and Culture. Perhaps the domain could also be used to market the fine wine from this region:)
.CHAMPAGNE(dotchampagne)  For the Champenois people in France. Champenois is a language spoken by a minority of people in Champagne in France and in Wallonia in Belgium. Also the name of one of our favorite wines:)
.CORSICA(dotCorsica) Napoleon was a Corsican. Corsica is an Island in the Mediterranean with a unique identity and one of the 27 regions of France

New gTLD Initiatives from the UK

.cymru(cymru): A proposed new Top Level Domain for the Welsh

.scot(dotScot): There's a both a geographic and community application for this new gTLD for Scotland or the Scottish people.
.eng: a proposed new Top Level Domain name for the English?
.ker Proposed Top Level Domain for Cornwall or for the Cornish people. A ‘.ker’ domain on the Internet would united the Cornish people, culture and language throughout the world and would contribute to and reflect the growing diversity on the Internet that is essential for inclusion in an ever changing electronic world.

New gTLD Initiatives from Belgium

Instead of partitioning the country along a physical lines, perhaps it's much easier to partition Belgium along virtual lines :) . I'm thinking dotFlemish and dotWallonia. Here are the new gTLD initiatives from Belgium:

.VL(dotVL I think they will have to add a third letter to make it a gTLD string or wait for independence of Flanders in order to acquire a two letter ISO 3166 code VL) This is the proposed new "gTLD" initiative for Flanders(The Dutch part of Belgium). I think it could be .VLX(dotVLX)

.gent(dotgent): Why not .Ghent? Perhaps Ghent is English? Proposed Top Level Domain name for the city of Ghent. Ghent is the capital of Flanders and this city new gTLD might also go "hand in hand" with .VLX for Flanders.
Any new gTLD initiatives from Wallonia?


New gTLD Initiatives from Germany
.berlin      Proposed Top Level Domain name for Berlin
.bayern    Proposed Top Level Domain name for the State of Bavaria
.hamburg Proposed Top Level Domain name for the city of Hamburg
.saarland  Proposed Top Level Domain name for Saarland
.nrw         Proposed Top Level Domain for the state of North Rhine Westphalia
Köln        Proposed Top Level Domain name for Köln

While these are new gTLDs for the various German states and cities, as a friends once told me, people in Germany are very patriotic to their states and even speak various dialects reflecting the states they come from. So you have a Bavarian versus Berliner and so on with their own "unique" cultures? I stand to be corrected but these could as well be new gTLDs reflecting old state loyalties in Germany? Pre-unification?

 New gTLDs Initiative from Spain

 .CAT(.Cat) : A gTLD for the Catalan community that by the way is already operational on the internet. It  was delegated in 2005.

.AND Proposed Top Level Domain name for the Andalusian Region and Community, estimated population of 17.5 million. Andalusia is the most populous and second largest of the autonomous communities of Spain. If you have seen the Spanish Bull fights or the flamenco music then those are cultural trademarks of the Andalusian community/region in Spain.

.BCN : Proposed Top Level Domain for Barcelona.


.VAL(dotVal or puntVal) : Proposed new Top Level Domain for the Valencian community. The Valencian Community is an autonomous community of Spain whose capital is Valencia. 

.GAL(dotGal or puntoGal) : Proposed Top Level Domain name for the Galician Community which currently numbers about 4 million globally. The Galicians  are an ethnic group and nationality, whose historical homeland is Galicia in north-western Spain.

.madrid(dotMadrid) : Proposed new Top Level Domain for the city of Madrid and by extension, maybe the TLD for the Castile Region.


.EUS(dotEUS) : Proposed Top Level domain name for the Basque language and culture. The Basque Language is Euskara.


.LLI(dotLLI) Proposed Top Level Domain for the Leonese Language and Culture. The Leonese language is spoken by 25,000 people in the Spanish provinces of Leon, Zamora and the Portuguese district of Bragança. Leonese is recognised by the UN as "Seriously Endangered".

New gTLD Initiatives from Italy

 .ven(dotveneto)

New gTLD Initiatives from Hungary

 .SIC(dotSzékely); Proposed new Top Level Domain for the Székely, a subgroup of the Hungarian people living mostly in the Székely Land, an ethno-cultural region in eastern Transylvania, Romania.

 dotKurd
Top Level Domain name for the Kurdish people. Organization applying from Iraqi Kurdistan.


Finally on dotRoma: This could have been a worthy initiative if it was a new gTLD initiative for the Roma Community. The Roma will never have a country of their own, at least they should have one on the internet? Unfortunately for the Roma, the city of Rome will apply for .Roma. Who would have a more legitimate claim for .roma(dotRoma) new gTLD from the Applicant Guidebook? The Romani Community or Rome?

 Any other ethnic new gTLD initiatives that might have been left out? Please leave in comments and it will appear in the article.

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ALAC on new gTLD Applicant Support: Who's needy?

Following up on the publication of Comments on ICANN's Applicant Support Program, one comment that has caught my attention is that by ALAC regarding what Criteria ICANN will use to qualify an applicant as a needy. In the Applicant Support document this criteria is not clearly defined; there's no objective criteria that has been cast in iron that will help the Support Application Review Panel(SARP) to determine whether an applicant is needy and worthy of a $138,000 waiver.

This could be a serious problem, because a "needy" applicant might be judged as "not needy" by the SARP and the consequences are fatal. Applicants that apply for financial support and fail to meet ICANN's minimum threshold for qualifying for this program will not only lose the financial support but will be excluded from the entire new gTLD process. Which means your newgTLD dreams and all the hard work will go up in smoke.

While this process has been instituted as a deterrent against gamers, for which there are no short supply of in the DNS industry, it may end up harming innocent victims.

So many applicants who will be applying for financial support will be taking a huge gamble. Dreams might be crushed. So before applying for financial support, applicants must be sure they are needy but how will they know if they meet that criteria of being "needy"?

According to the ALAC Statement: The Preliminary Implementation plan does not include sufficient discussion of the criteria by which a Support Applicant will be judged as meeting financial need requirements. While the JAS WG recommendation was also deficient in this matter, there was recommendation that further work be done by the JAS WG together with the Staff Implementation team to develop objective criteria for the financial evaluation. The need to do this has been made greater by the punishment documented in the Preliminary Implementation Program for 'gaming', i.e. by designating forfeiture of the application fee and exclusion from the New gTLD program for those judged as not meeting the financial need criteria. While this may be a clever mechanism for dissuading ICANN's professional gamers, how can an applicant from outside the ICANN community trust that the process won't find them insufficiently needy when they are being measured against unknown criteria. 

$47K USD is a great sum for an applicant from a developing economy to gamble on being judged insufficiently needy against an unspecified set of financial criteria. ALAC advises that the Staff Implementation plan work with a group of JAS WG volunteers and others to develop a set of objective criteria for the financial evaluation. The need to do this has been made greater by the punishment documented in the Preliminary Implementation Program for 'gaming', i.e. by designating forfeiture of the application fee and exclusion from the New gTLD program for those judged as not meeting the financial need criteria. While this may be a clever mechanism for dissuading ICANN's professional gamers, how can an applicant from outside the ICANN community trust that the process won't find them insufficiently needy when they are being measured against unknown criteria. $47K USD is a great sum for an applicant from a developing economy to gamble on being judged insufficiently needy against an unspecified set of financial criteria.

ALAC advises that the Staff Implementation plan work with a group of JAS WG volunteers and others to develop a set of objective criteria that take the realities of the developing world and its variety into
account.

According to ICANN's Draft Financial Assistance Handbook published for public comment just before Christmas, the Financial Needs criterion will be evaluated based operational environment(difficulty of obtaining funding), organizational size(priority to small and medium sized organizations when evaluating applications for financial support), project budget and funding resources(Applicants who clearly identify why financial support would help to improve their financial projections or mitigate any potential risks will be given 1 point.), Outreach for financial support(demonstrate that you have taken extra steps in sourcing funds for the new gTLD initiatives eg from donors etc).

It's all very fuzzy and many

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New gTLDs: .FC Domain Names for Football Clubs?

Crazy .FC new "gTLD" idea
I bumped on this new gTLD initiative on this blog which faithfully documents emerging new gTLD projects. Like some of the many potential new gTLD strings popping up recently, this is definitely one of the more creative ones. So you could have Barcelona.fc Arsenal.fc RealMadrid.fc and so on but who else? But the idea is crazy/misinformed from the start, since a generic domain name must have at least 3 characters. So whoever is planning to apply for a two character .FC new gTLD is just blowing lots of smoke.

It's not clear whether an application will be submitted to ICANN for this newgTLD as the originator of the idea is still petitioning clubs within the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish leagues for support but effort should be spared as the idea does NOT meet even the most minimum criteria for a gTLD. From the .FC Domain Name website: "
My idea was the introduction of a .fc domain name, for football clubs across the globe. We already have domains for various countries, further education facilities and organisations to name but a few. So why didn't we have a domain for the worlds most popular sport?
I decided to compile a list of all the professional football teams within the United Kingdom; Englands Premiership to League Two, Scotlands Premier League to third division and Wales and Ireland top flights. One hundred and fifty six football teams all in. I took down the details of each of the clubs — urls & contact email addresses — and compiled a list of how many teams had the words "football club" or "fc" in their domains." Jack Osborne, .FC new gTLD

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Could there be .city newgTLD Applications from Africa?

The new gTLD applications open tomorrow, Thursday at 00.01 UTC and many cities or organizations applying on behalf of cities have already indicated their intention to turn their names into virtual real estates. There will be a .paris(dotParis) for Paris , .berlin(dotBerlin) for Berlin, .nyc(botNYC) for New York, .istanbul(dotIstanbul) for Istanbul, .london(dotLondon) plus more.

I wonder how many African cities or organizations applying on their behalf will be submitting applications to ICANN for a .africancity new gTLD. As far as I know, the entire newgTLD debate on the continent has revolved around .africa which is rather sad as people are walking away from other viable TLD oppotunities to focus on just one newTLD!

Cities like Nairobi, Cairo, Cape Town, Lagos, Abuja, Dakar, Addis could apply for new gTLDs; am not sure if there will be a big market at this time but there's good potential for a domain market in the future.Besides the cities could freely use the gTLD to brand their services such as green.nairobi taxes.nairobi schools.nairobi museums.nairobi art.nairobi tours.cape travel.cape ski.cape and so on while they wait for the market to come of age.

.city applications for new gTLD do not qualify for ICANN Applicant Support, so the cities will have to fork out the full $185,000...and justify it to the residents. Especially if the sewers are still open and there are long queues in the clinics.

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ICANN Releases French Version of Applicant Guidebook

For the last few years, the eight versions of the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook have been published in English making life very difficult for French Speakers deeply interested in the new gTLD process. Several applications for new gTLDs are expected to emerge from France and other French speaking countries. There are 200 million French speakers globally and I think there should have been a .French new gTLD for all the proud French speakers globally :) France invests so much in building its global cultural institutes, so maybe an investment in .French should have been in order, no?

Anyway, the French new gTLD Applicant Guidebook is here, but isn't it too late?

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New gTLDs Applications Open Tomorrow

It's finally here, after years of policy deliberations and push and shove, the new gTLDs applications begin tomorrow setting in motion a process that coild see over 500 colorful Top Level Domains like .africa .green .bank .eco .berlin .wine added to the Domain Name system. The internet will no longer br just about a .COM and .ccTLD.

Tomorrow, at about 00.01 UTC, the TLD Application System(TAS) will begin accepting applications from new gTLD applicants for the various new gTLDs which will fall under any of these categories: .region .brand .industry .generic  . Applicants will pay $5000 to access the full application form.

The entire cost of application for new gTLDs will be $185,000.

Needy applicants, particularly from the developing countries will receive a $138,000 waiver and will pay $47,000 to apply for a new gTLD. Registration into the application system is open until 29th March, 2012 while the application process closes on 12th Aprill,2012.

From Africa, .africa will be the highest profile new gTLD application. There are expectations that other new gTLD initiatives for community TLDs might emerge following ICANN's introduction of Applicant Support Program, although this is highly unlikely.

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Internet War: Interview with Sophia Bekele on the Scramble for DotAfrica new Top Level Domain

 The East African Newspaper is a highly influential and respected source of reliable business news that has  over  70k subscribers and over 1m readers in East Africa and online globally. www.theeastafrcan.co.ke

By the end of 2012, companies should be able to set up websites with almost any address as long as they can lay a legitimate claim to the domain name….. In Africa, control of the .africa domain name is at the centre of a tussle between the Africa Union Commission and outfits such as the DotConnectAfrica Organisation (DCA). The East African spoke to the DCA boss Ms Sophia Bekele on who will control  .africa.

Ms Sophia Bekele, DotConnectAfrica Executive Director

What is the tussle over the .Africa domain all about?

The controversy emerged from a plan by the Africa Union Commission to make the .africa, .afrique and .afriqia, all similar name strings unavailable by including it in the list of reserved names, so as to frustrate the hopes of genuine applicants like DCA.

The AU had asked ICANN to reserve the names. Such a proposal is a disingenuous attempt to afford special legislative protection to the AU to own these strings through a method of bypassing the formal application process of the ICNN new generic top level domains (gTLDs).

 You have openly criticised the AU leadership on this matter. What is it that you want done?

Giving the AU an upper hand in managing the domain raises conflict of interest issues as some players in this process are planning to pre-qualify organisations that will apply for .africa while they themselves have vested interests in the .africa TLD, because they floated separate .africa proposals of their own, and have also openly identified with some prospective applicants.

If the AU insists on controlling, owning and leading the process by using its political influence to gain official control of this new gTLD, then the AU should be treated as any other prospective applicant that also needs to abide by the ICANN Applicants Guidebook and should not be given preferential treatment to the detriment of other applicants.

What was DCA’s opposition to the “reserved names” issue that was proposed by the African Round-table, at the Public Forum in Dakar?

DCA remains opposed to the AU request to reserve the names which will enable it to separately negotiate the delegation of these name strings  under a separate process outside the aegis of the ICANN new gTLD programme.

This defeats the objective of the ICANN new gTLD process and eliminates competition even before the application has been submitted to ICANN.

In the interim, all interested observers are now waiting for ICANN to provide a ruling on whether .africa and related name strings should be reserved or not. This will be a big decision and will shape the direction the new gTLD programme will take regarding .africa.

What were the resolutions from latest Icann meeting in Dakar last month on new TLDs and how are they likely to shape the adoption of the new regime?

The new gTLD programme was approved in the Singapore meeting earlier so there are no major resolutions that will hinder the momentum of the process. But there are some resolutions with big implications for Africa in particular such as the resolution to adopt the Joint Applicant Support Working Group (JAS WG) report on how ICANN can assist applicants from the developing countries increase their participation in the new gTLD.

This could see more new gTLD initiatives emerging from Africa in this round.

The other issue was the passing of the $900,000 budget for ICANN’s communication plan and the resolution by the board on ethics and conflicts of interest which will give a statement on how ICANN directors with interest in particular new gTLD initiatives can be restricted from participation in the deliberations and decision making on the new gTLDs program.

What remains to be done now before applications in January 2012 to Icann?

There are so many internal procedures involved including negotiating and signing a few contracts, partnership agreements, organising documentation and so forth.

However, until the application window opens in early January in2012, we shall continue our campaign, and even during the application period, so as to continue to raise awareness and win the required support for the .africa gTLD.

Post Courtesy The East African and DotConnectAfrica
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