Technical Details and Vendor Advice

VeriSign, Inc., the registry that operates .COM, .NET, .NAME, .CC and .TV, published its first quarter revenue figures in a press release earlier this week. The company saw its revenue top $200 million for the quarter, marking a 13 percent increase from the first quarter in 2011.

Part of that revenue growth can be attributed to a 7.7 percent year-over-year increase in domain name registrations. But in that same press release, Verisign also revealed that it applied for 14 new gTLDs, including 12 transliterations of .COM and .NET, and that it has partnered with other new gTLD applicants to provide back-end registry services for an additional 220 new gTLDs.

Other registries have not yet revealed how many applications they will be providing back-end services for, but this information will eventually become public when ICANN posts the public portions of the new gTLD applications, namely the responses to Questions 1 through 30a. We expect other major registries such as Neustar, Afilias, Nominet and PIR to all make a big showing, but it will be interesting to see just how the numbers turn out for these players.

The new gTLD application deadline is approaching fast, with just about six weeks left to submit. From our work at FairWinds, we know that many companies are working to finalize their applications, and some are even just getting started now. But everyone, regardless of when they got started, is hurtling toward the April 12 finish line. (more...)

Back in October, we published a post titled “The Right Registrar,” where we discussed which registrar partner brand owners should choose if they decide to apply for and operate a new gTLD. There, we advised that brands choosing to operate closed registries should, for the sake of consistency, stick with their corporate registrar partners. Brands choosing to operate an open gTLD registry, on the other hand, should shop around for registrars with better consumer-facing interfaces and customer services representatives. But in both cases, we warned brands against rushing to jump into bed with any registrar partner too soon. (more...)

Sometimes it seems like we spend a lot of time ragging on ICANN here on gTLD Strategy. It’s not that we have some inherent beef with the organization. But sometimes, like that kid in grade school who always corrected your grammar (“Actually, it’s ‘you and I ,’ not ‘you and me’”), ICANN does things that make it hard to love. Really hard. (more...)

This post is the final installment of last week’s gTLD finance series. Today, we’re going to talk about tips to answer ICANN’s Financial Capability questions.

In keeping with its “one-size-fits-all” approach, ICANN designed the scoring system of the gTLD application to ensure that only established entities that with the technical and monetary wherewithal to operate a gTLD registry will be awarded extensions. (more...)

This week here on the gTLD Strategy blog, we’re going to be talking finance. Specifically, we’ll be breaking down the costs of applying for and operating a new gTLD, the application questions that deal with finances, and a little thing called the Continuing Operations Instrument (COI). Today, we’re going to discuss the COI and the options applicants have available to them.

As we mentioned in yesterday's post, the Applicant Guidebook requires all applicants to submit the same information, regardless of whether they are multinational corporations with billions of dollars in revenue, or globetrotting groups of entrepreneurs scrambling to find investors willing to back their .IDEA. (more...)

This week here on the gTLD Strategy blog, we’re going to be talking finance. Specifically, we’ll be breaking down the costs of applying for and operating a new gTLD, the application questions that deal with finances, and a little thing called the Continued Operations Instrument. Today, we’re going to get started with the cost breakdown.

At this point, it’s common knowledge that it costs a cool $185,000 to apply for a new gTLD. But what exactly does that sum cover? Essentially, it amounts to a “pay-to-play” filing charge, and it is really just the cover charge applicants will have to pay to get into the new gTLD club. If the application faces complications like String Contention, any kinds of objections or Extended Valuation, that amount will creep up. (more...)

A few weeks ago, we blogged about ICANN's recent reluctance to own up to its role as an advocate of new gTLDs (according to statements by CEO Rod Beckstrom, the organization is just educating people about the new extensions). But over the past few months, as we here at FairWinds have been studying the New gTLD Applicant Guidebook inside and out, we've noticed a few other instances where ICANN seems to be trying to evade responsibility when it comes to new gTLDs. (more...)

This is the second post in a two-part series of blog posts explaining String Contention Sets, a complex aspect of ICANN's new gTLD evaluation process.

So you've found yourself in a String Contention Set. Another party has applied for the same new gTLD as you, or one that is so visually similar that ICANN believes that allowing both strings to become full-fledged new gTLDs will cause confusion among Internet users.

Let's assume that the Contention Set consists of you and one other applicant. What happens now? First, ICANN encourages you both to reach an agreement amongst yourselves as to which application will proceed. Both of you can choose to drop out at this point, or one can concede to the other, but there is no way that both applications can proceed with each of you operating a separate registry. (more...)