Additional responses from applicants of the mTLD

[<ritva.siren@xxxxxxxxx>]

In recent postings there are several repeats of claims and comments, which were already 
addressed in our previous responses. Instead of repeating them, we kindly ask that 
commenters read our responses of 28th and 29th of April.
There are comments that the mTLD applicants try to enhance their own business.  The 
only success in mass-market businesses can come from end user acceptance of products 
and services and we see mTLD to be a key component in the goal of having user-friendly 
mobile services over Internet. Therefore, the benefit for the users and the success for 
our businesses are inseparable.  
Complaint, that registrants and especially operator registrants in the mTLD would name 
their own subscribers within their domains is interesting. Why wouldn't they? Isn't 
that part of the regular Internet naming practice today? In general this type of 
accusations are not relevant to the TLD application in general. It doesn't matter, 
whether the mTLD exists or not for that naming practice to happen.
Some comments oppose the right of the mobile industry to be innovative, while at the 
same time denying, that mobile has any special characteristics. Perhaps that is, why 
after all this time Internet still doesn't have wider scale mobile services, while 
other sectors of Internet technologies have evolved strongly. While preparing our 
application we assumed and still believe, that majority of Internet developers will be 
excited about the task to test and get proof of the usability of our common Internet 
also for the mobile services and of possibility to participate in the new 
opportunities, which will be generated. 
A couple of comments claim that the advancement of mobile network and handset 
technologies closes the gap to the PC services forgetting the simultaneous advancement 
of the PC and wireline technologies . As we have said before there will obviously be 
for a long time a gap between what capacity wireline access can offer versus the per 
subscriber capacity over WAN and WLAN access as well as a gap between regular laptops 
and smaller form factor handsets.
Some claims use implementation examples of single operators or countries as 
justifications of why an mTLD is not needed even when admitting that specific mobile 
services have been built to cover differences of PC use and handset use and specific 
name conventions are used.  However, we believe it to be closer to the true Internet 
spirit to go after content and related naming solutions that encompass operator, 
country, wireless access technology and manufacturer boundaries. The aim is to extend 
possibilities for end users to use their mobile devices and services in widest possible 
settings, considering that many mobile handsets already today and in future even more 
widely can be and are used globally while travelling.
There is also an interesting conflict between claims of mTLD being too large and on the 
other hand too limiting. Perhaps the average of that is that the community is about 
what it should be. We are in process of building a Support Organization, which at the 
time of founding the Mobi JV company will have representation of all of the sectors of 
the community.
We have elected to not make some of the application information public at this time. 
However, the evaluators and the ICANN staff have access to the full application 
material. It is made  clear throughout the application, that registration in the mTLD 
will be open to all mobile users and service providers, that we use public standards 
and that only real specialties in it all is the implementation of requirements of 
mobility.
Innovation comes from competition of different approaches. The mTLD is one of such 
approaches for future of communications services. We therefore hope that ICANN doesn't 
decide to negatively impact a possibility of a large business to develop their consumer 
services in ways they see being the best practices for the consumers and for the 
business and at the same time bring new possibilities to other parties as well..

On behalf of the mTLD applicants 

Ritva Siren