Issue 177 - 28th January 2005

.as (American Samoa) IDNs coming soon

A lottery-style pre-registration phase will begin for .as Internationalised Domain Names (IDN) on 1st February. Open registration will commence on 1st March. .as IDNs will support an additional 92 characters (a full list is available at http://www.nic.as/idnchars.html).

ICANN receives five applications for management of .net

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has received five applications to operate the .net Top Level Domain (TLD) from 1st July this year, for a term no less than six years. The applicants are:

- Afilias Limited (operator of .info)

- CORE++ (a Spanish-based coalition of international companies including telecommunications firm Telefonica Group, and domain registration organisations from Korea, Brazil, and South Africa)

- Denic eG (operator of German TLD, .de)

- Sentan Registry Services (a joint venture between NeuLevel and Japan Registry Services Co Ltd - the former being a branch of NeuStar, the .biz operator; the latter running the Japanese TLD, .jp)

- VeriSign Inc (current operator of .net and also the TLD with the highest number of registrations, .com)

ICANN 2005 annual meeting will be held in Vancouver

This year's ICANN annual conference will take place from 30th November to 4th December at the Westin Bayshore, Vancouver, Canada. This is the first time Canada has hosted ICANN's annual meeting. Over 1,500 delegates from 100 countries are expected to attend.

Two other ICANN meetings are scheduled earlier in the year, one in Argentina (4-8th April), one in Luxembourg (11-15th July).

Over 4,000 Sunrise applications received for .in

The Indian Registry received over 4,000 applications for the .in TLD during the Sunrise period for trademark holders, which ended 21st January.