ICANN have just released a statement explaining the plan to use a ‘Prioritization Draw’ to assign each New gTLD application with a priority number. This comes after the Batching process, using digital archery, was abandoned when flaws were found in the system that allowed some applicants to gain an unfair advantage. As a domain reseller, you should be taking an interest in ICANN’s New gTLDs, as they are without question the future of the domain name industry.
A prioritization of applications is needed to ensure that the New gTLD Program moves forward at ‘a controlled pace’ and ‘Limit delegations to 1000/year to ensure smooth and stable delegation’.
The draw for the priority numbers will take place on a day in the period from 4th December to 15th December 2012 in Los Angeles, USA. Each applicant will purchase a paper ticket at a cost of $100. The tickets are then drawn at random and the relevant priority number is assigned to that applicant. Therefore, each and every application has an identical chance of achieving a higher priority. The applicant themselves, or a representative of the applicant, must be present at the draw to purchase the ticket.
The only exceptions to the process are IDNs, which will be processed first, ahead of any other New gTLDs. ICANN is seeking to increase the ‘DNS diversity’ available on the Internet. IDNs are an extremely important part of this process and therefore will be assigned higher priority than their Latin script counterparts.
The initial evaluations of each application and the release of the evaluation results, will be decided according to the priority of that application. Applications with higher priority will start being published from late March 2013 , while the lowest priority evaluations don’t expect to be completed until late June 2013.
Those who opt out of the draw will be evaluated at the end of the process, in a random order. ICANN can appoint a representative for any applicant who cannot travel to the draw. Also, as the draw is a manual process, there are no technical risks.
Domain name resellers can keep up to date with all the latest ICANN and Industry news on the Domain Name Industry news page on Domainbox.com.