The good news is that ICANN is apparently moving forward with IDNs in the
TLD. The bad news is they're only talking about this with the press. Would
love to get a briefing on ICANN's top-level IDN-TLD tests in Wellington.
-- Bret
--
ICANN to launch trial testing of IDNs forTop Level Domains in the third
quarter of 2006
Shanghai. March 14. INTERFAX-CHINA - English language will lose its
monopoly on Internet domain names before the end of the year. ICANN (The
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will start the trial
testing of internationalized domain names (IDN) in the Top Level Domain
(TLD) system, in the third quarter of 2006, Paul Twomey, President and CEO
of ICANN, told Interfax in an interview Tuesday. Once IDN domain names are
implemented Internet sites will able to have domain names in foreign
languages, and foreign character sets- such as Chinese.
"The preparation for the testing is already underway, and it will be a
testing on the top of the root," said Twomey. "We are presently moving to
introduce the IDNs of TLD, and are much closer to the end for the answer."
But the exact date for the launch of the IDN is not yet available.
In order to implement the internationalized domain name system, ICANN has
launched two working groups including the Presidents Advisory Committee with
technical experts, and a policy group to draft explicit policies on the
application and operation of IDNs. Twomey said that ICANN was expecting the
policy development process to come to a conclusion in the end of the third
quarter or the early fourth quarter this year.
"I understand people's complaints towards ICANN's slow process on this
issue," said Twomey. "ICANN should ensure the stability, usability of the
Internet, and therefore, the launch of IDN involves different layers and
protocols, and is not as simple as it sounds."
The three biggest concerns for ICANN to implement IDNs in TLD include
technical stability, the linguistic issue of language characters, and the
policy of later operation. "The launch of IDNs is a big issue for ICANN, and
important to Internet users worldwide, especially those do not speak
English," said Twomey.
However, Twomey emphasized that the real thing that drives Internet and
usability should be the local Internet content instead of the domain name
system.
Commenting on the recent change that China has made towards its domain name
system, Twomey said the change that China has made is mainly to build up
their second-level domain name structure as other countries do. "We do not
see they are transferring their own domain name systems onto their single
root services."
The full text of the interview, where Twomey talks about the Chinese
Internet market, future development of the Internet worldwide, ICANN's
linguistic policy, allocation policies, international strategy, censorship
and other matters, will be available exclusively in the Interfax China IT
Report Weekly.
-FW
http://www.interfax.cn/showfeature.asp?aid=10963&slug=INTERNET-ICANN-PAU
L-TWOMEY-DOMAIN-NAME%22%3E