[registrars] Migration of RACE encoded IDN registrations for .com and .net.

["Robert F. Connelly" <rconnell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Registrars:

A very important notice was posted by Verisign-GRS yesterday.  Some of you 
who are affected may not have noticed it.  I paste it here:
=========================
2. SRS Scheduled Maintenance expanded to include the IDN Standards
Migration.

VeriSign received approval from ICANN on the planned IDN Migration.
Given this news, the commercial launch date for the release of the IDN
migration is December 13, 2003.  As part of the planned release,
VeriSign will migrate to the IDN Standards, launch Phase II of our
character variant solution and introduce email functionality for IDNs
via the i-Nav plug-in.  This functionality was originally deployed to
the Operational Testing and Evaluation environment (OT&E) in August of
this year.

We apologize for the changing communication regarding our maintenance
window and release. However, our release has been dependent upon
receiving approval from ICANN.  If you need any assistance regarding
this release, please contact our customer service department or
Product management team. The IDN Standards Migration begins on December
13th, the start of the Migration Transition Period.  The Migration
Transition Period will end in April 2004.

For further details and updates, visit the IDN Web site sections at:
IDN Standards Migration:
http://www.verisign-grs.com/support/mdn/technology/migration.html.
Character Variants:
http://www.verisign.com/nds/naming/idn/learn/variants/

IDN News
In our pursuit of the global adoption and usage of IDNs, VeriSign
sponsored an IDN Software Developers Summit in early November in
Minneapolis, Minnesota.  VeriSign and other interested parties were
encouraged by the results of the meeting and are in the process of
forming a consortium to continue the work started by the IETF with the
goal of deploying interoperable applications that include these IDN
technologies.  Participants in the summit included AOL, Microsoft (US),
Sun, IBM, Qualcomm as well as JPRS, DENIC, and KRNIC and other
registries.  The group plans to produce a white paper that will set
forth a plan for the adoption of IDN technologies into client
applications.

If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to
contact Pat Kane (pkane@xxxxxxxxxxxx) or your account manager.
==================================

end quote:

While those of us in Asia are most affected, many of the former ML 
registrations were made by registrars outside Asia.  We all made these 
registrations in good faith starting on 9 November 2000, over 37 months 
ago.  Our registrants have either given up and cancelled or are holding on 
in the hopes of this present announcement.
As I read it, this announcement does *not* include the conversion to 
punycode.  Let's hope that follows soon hereafter;-}
Cordially, BobC

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"It doesn't do any good to run
if you don't start on time!"

"A stitch in time saves nine."

"We're lost -- but we're making good time".
City Slickers