[council] IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process Launch

[Glen de Saint Géry <Glen@xxxxxxxxx>]

IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process Launch
http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-16nov09-en.htm

16 November 2009
ICANN is pleased to announce the launch of the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process.

Non-English speakers across the globe will soon have access to the Internet 
addresses completely in their own language. The Internet Corporation for 
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization charged with overseeing 
the Internet's naming and numbering systems, is today launching a process for 
delegating a number of internationalized top-level domains.

IDNs are domain names that include characters other than the currently 
available set of the English alphabet (the 26 letters "a-z", numbers 0 to 9, 
and hyphens). ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush noted, "The IDN program will 
encompass close to one hundred thousand characters, opening up the Internet to 
billions of potential users around the globe."

ICANN President Rod Beckstrom described the importance of this change to the 
global Internet community, "Over half the Internet users around the world don't 
use a Latin-based script as their native language. IDNs are about making the 
Internet more global and accessible for everyone."

Starting November 16, 2009 at 00:00UTC ICANN will accept requests from 
representatives of countries and territories around the world for new Internet 
extensions that represent their country name and are made up of non-Roman 
characters.

Once the requests are evaluated and approved, Internet extensions are expected 
to come online in many countries during 2010.

"This is the biggest technical change to the Internet's addressing system - the 
Domain Name System - in many years," said Tina Dam, ICANN's Senior Director of 
Internationalized Domain Names. "Right now, it's not possible to get a domain 
name entirely in for example Chinese characters or Arabic characters. This is 
about to change."

It's important to note that ICANN will not accept direct registration 
applications for second-level domain names - the part before the Internet 
extension or suffix - from individuals, companies, or organizations. The 
ability for people to get a domain name in their language will come later - 
through a process determined by the entity that successfully applies for an IDN 
country-code top-level.

The IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process is available online now, including an online 
request form, a manual describing how to apply, a list of Frequently Asked 
Questions, ICANN's final implementation plan, and brief history of the Fast 
Track process.

All material and access to the system is available at: 
http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/

Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat
gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://gnso.icann.org