ICANN To Release 2-Character New gTLD Domains

The Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has recently decided to introduce 2-character domains in the new gTLD namespace.

ICANN made this decision during ICANN 51 conference ,held in Los Angeles, on October 16,2014.

ICANN’s board of directors decided to instruct ICANN’s executive to “develop and implement an efficient procedure for the release of two-character domains currently required to be reserved in the New gTLD Registry Agreement”

“Why is the Board addressing the issue?

Section 2 of Specification 5 (Schedule of Reserved Names) of the New gTLD Registry Agreement addresses reservations of two-character labels as follows:

    All two-character ASCII labels shall be withheld from registration or allocated to Registry Operator at the second level within the TLD. Such labels may not be activated in the DNS, and may not be released for registration to any person or entity other than Registry Operator, provided that such two-character label strings may be released to the extent that Registry Operator reaches agreement with the related government and country-code manager of the string as specified in the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard. The Registry Operator may also propose the release of these reservations based on its implementation of measures to avoid confusion with the corresponding country codes, subject to approval by ICANN.

In January 2014, New gTLD Registry Operators began submitting requests to ICANN through the Registry Services Evaluation Policy (RSEP) process proposing to implement a new registry service to release certain two-character domain names required to be reserved by the New gTLD Registry Agreement. The implementation of the proposals would require an amendment to the Exhibit A of the respective Registry Agreements. The proposed amendments to implement the new registry service were the subject of public comment periods over the past several months. In total, ICANN has posted 28 RSEP proposals and amendments, which concern a total of 203 New gTLDs. ICANN continues to receive additional RSEP requests on a weekly basis for the same Registry Service.

Pursuant to Section 2.4.D of the RSEP and the RSEP Implementation Notes, if the implementation of a proposed service requires a material change to the Registry Agreement, the preliminary determination will be referred to the ICANN Board for consideration.

What is the proposal being considered?

The Board is taking action at this time to direct the President and CEO to develop and implement an efficient process to permit the release of two-characters names in New gTLDs, taking into account the GAC’s advice in the Los Angeles Communiqué.”

For more information check out ICANN’s website here.