ICANN,I think perhaps you have overlooked the main issue on everyone's minds here.
Your evaluations suggest that should Affilias (or any other consortium that controls
99% of market share) choose to submit an application for new TLDs designed to open
up the WWW each and every time ICANN calls for applications, their's would be approved.
The
impression I get from your summary evaluation and the IOD and Afilias evaluation
is that Affilias deserve to get bigger by virtue of them already being the biggest.
This
obviously contradicts the reason for the whole process of introducing new TLDs --
to promote competition -- in the first place. A process which IOD has been involved
in since the beginning.
IOD naturally has much less registrations than Afilias,
but isn't this just more proof that Afilias shouldn't be allowed to get millions
more?
A look at Chris Ambler's (CTO, IODesign) comments (mostly replies to questions)
on the previous message board would shed some light on the concerns you have expressed
in the evaluation of IOD's application.
(Don't, however, try and look for an Afilias
representative's answers to posters' questions, because you won't find any)
Regards,
Darryn
Tan
Singapore