Further Telnic disclosure & evaluation recommended before final ICANN Agreement
In reviewing the documents provided and published by Telnic through ICANN, and the proposed ICANN-Telnic agreement, there seemed to be a lack of clarity identifying the Supporting Community for the proposed .tel TLD. Without a fully identified Supporting Community it is difficult to evaluate and understand the true commercial potential and viability around granting the .tel TLD to Telnic at this time. In order to better understand the proposed ICANN-Telnic .tel TLD agreement it would be helpful if both ICANN and Telnic could provide insight and answers to the following questions: 1. The Telnic .tel TLD concept is interesting, unique and has potential merit, but who is the Supporting Community? Why hasn't it been publicly disclosed? 2. Without the explicit support from technology standards bodies, industry trade organisations nor the global Information, Communication and Telecommunication (ICT) vendor community, how can it best be determined if the Telnic proposed .tel TLD has the potential to fulfill its promise to deliver on its unique TLD value proposition? And, what are the potential risks and associated consequences to the TLD industry if it can not? 3. As its Supporting Community has not been clearly identified, will Telnic look to other TLD markets to leverage its granted .tel TLD if it not successful with its current unique value proposition offer? 4. Will the proposed ICANN granted $0.15 per domain Telnic price-point advantage be detrimental to current TLD industry viability? In a very simple and transparent way, two recently approved TLDs have been able to explicitly identify Supporting Communities to best provide insight to the potential viability for their TLDs – why hasn't Telnic been able to do the same? Examples of Supporting Communities from two recently approved TLDs: .travel - Travel Partnership Corporation (TTPC) TTPC's current member organisations include: Pacific Asia Travel Association, International Hotel & Restaurant Association, World Travel & Tourism Council, International Association of Convention & Visitor Bureaus, International Council of Cruise Lines, The American Society of Travel Agents, International Air Transport Association, European Tour Operators Association, and United Federation of Travel Agents' Associations. Additionally, TTPC has increased its Supporting Community significantly since being granted the .travel TLD. See the TTPC website for more details – www.ttpc.org .mobi - mobile Top Level Domain Ltd. (mTLD) mTLD's current member organisations include: Ericsson, Google, GSM Association, Hutchison, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefónica Móviles, TIM, and Vodafone. Additionally, mTLD has increased its Supporting Community significantly since being granted the .mobi TLD. See the mTLD website for more details – www.mtld.mobi Note: Both these approved TLDs are currently contracted with ICANN at a higher price-point than the proposed ICANN-Telnic agreement – why is that? ICANN should consider further evaluation into the Telnic proposed .tel TLD before finalising the proposed agreement in order to best serve the interests of the stakeholder community and industry ecosystem it has set out to govern and support. As new TLD innovations are always welcome by the ICANN stakeholder community, all parties involved with ICANN and the industry ecosystem created through domain space innovations should be encouraged to disclose to the best of their ability how the global community it is looking to serve with any TLD will be supportive of its commercialisation efforts. If there is no explicit support demonstrated, why should a TLD be granted and commercialised? What purpose would this serve? In order to provide the ICANN stakeholder community with more insightful information as well as demonstrate the true value and potential for the proposed .tel TLD, Telnic should provide more transparency into its Supporting Community, market studies, market sizing, and pre-commercialization interests. An independent study evaluating the potential success and viability of the .tel TLD would also be helpful to the ICANN stakeholder community. In order to provide more clarity and transparency, Telnic should be more open to disclosing information around the potential success of the .tel TLD and prove its viability before final ICANN approvals are granted. With Telnic's full cooperation for disclosure, ICANN stakeholder due diligence should be able to adequately address the Supporting Community, viability and preferred pricing queries outlined in this posting. After future review and acceptance of the ICANN-Telnic proposed .tel TLD by ICANN stakeholders, I look forward to Telnic securing and successfully launching its proposed .tel TLD in order global communities to take advantage of emerging TLD innovations in a fair and openly competitive manner. Sincerely, Michael J. O'Farrell CEO mifon company |