[ALAC-Announce] ICANN News Alert -- ICANN Announces Conclusion of New gTLD Initial Evaluations

[ICANN At-Large Staff]

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News Alert

http://www.icann.org/en/news/press/releases/release-30aug13-en.pdf [PDF, 211 KB]

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ICANN Announces Conclusion of New gTLD Initial Evaluations

Major Milestone Reached in New Domain Program

30 August 2013

Los Angeles, California… ICANN's Generic Domains Division announced today the conclusion of the Initial Evaluation (IE) phase of the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) program. More than 1,700 applications have now moved to the next steps in the program.

"This is an extraordinary landmark which demonstrates the progress in this program," said Akram Atallah, President of ICANN's Generic Domains Division. "We are looking forward to the innovations that these new introductions will enable on the Internet."

Out of the 1,930 new gTLD applications submitted, a total of 1,745 applications passed Initial Evaluation, 32 have gone into Extended Evaluation, and 121 were withdrawn from the program.

"It would be an understatement to say we are excited to reach this point," said Christine Willett, Vice President of gTLD Operations. "Applicants worked hard on their applications and the evaluations were complex and rigorous. We are pleased that 90% of the original applications passed Initial Evaluation – this is a clear and distinct success."

Applications that passed IE will proceed through the program based on their complexity. Some may move straight to the Transition to Delegation phase, while others may have to go through additional steps, such as dispute resolution and string contention.

As another indicator of the progression of the New gTLD Program, 12 additional registry agreements have just been signed, 11 of which are the first English character TLDs. The contracts govern the registry and administration of a dozen new gTLD's.

ICANN's new gTLD program is the result of 8-years of study, 47 public comment periods, which produced over 2,400 comments, 55 explanatory memoranda and 7 versions of the new gTLD Applicant guidebook.

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For more information about the new gTLD program, go to: http://newgtlds.icann.org/en

For more information on the status of a specific application, go to: https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/viewstatus

Media Contacts

Brad White
ICANN Director of Global Media Affairs
Washington, D.C.
Tel. +1 202.570.7118
brad.white at icann.org<mailto:brad.white at icann.org>

Andrew Robertson
Edelman Public Relations
London, U.K.
Tel. + 44 (7811) 341 945
andrew.robertson at edelman.com<mailto:andrew.robertson at edelman.com>

James Cole
ICANN Global Media Coordinator
Washington, D.C.
Tel. +1 202.570.7139
james.cole at icann.org<mailto:james.cole at icann.org>

About ICANN: ICANN's mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet's unique identifiers. ICANN doesn't control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn't deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet's naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: www.icann.org<http://www.icann.org/>.



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