Sophia Bekele Statement of Interest

I represent a California based, privately held company, CBS Enterprise Group, which is engaged in international business. As part of its portfolio of services, the company provides systems integration services through CBS International, which delivers domain registration, web hosting and email services to end users via a reseller, agreement with registrars. Less than 10% of CBS's business is derived from these services.

ICANN is a critical organization for the proper governance of the Internet and its stability and security. Given current growing environment of the Internet, there are many challenges ahead for ICANN. I am most interested in issues of emerging economies and the use of ICT and the growth of Internet or lack thereof over these environments. Therefore, the policies developed by ICANN over issues governing the global Internet particularly domain names could determine the gap in the digital divide within these economies. As such, I am actively involved in the policy development process of the International Domain Names (IDNs) and generic Top Level Domain names (gTLDs) that are of concern. I have also initiated and pursuing the efforts for a successful launch of the '.Africa' continental domain name project within ICANN and the global African community. Towards this end, I will be continuing my interest in these areas.

In my personal capacity, I do not have any of my moneys, invested in companies that are in the registrar businesses. I do not believe that any activities of the Council or ICANN could have a material effect on the work I do at CBS International.