Melbourne IT set to profit from ICANN's new global domains (TLDs)
Melbourne IT stands poised to profit from next years opening up of the global Internet domain name system to new top level domains (TLDs) following its recent signing of a memorandum of understanding with US company - Verisign.
Bruce Tonkin, Melbourne IT’s chief strategy officer, said that the MoU is an extension of the partnership the two companies already enjoy, and positions
Melbourne IT to offer a complete package of services to any company wanting to set up a new gTLD.
He said the agreement takes advantage of Verisign’s experience and technological know-how in running DNS (domain name system) servers for the world’s largest commercial domain – dot.com.
“Many companies may be thinking it looks fairly easy to set-up a new global domain and, from a technical stand-point that’s probably true.”
“But its increasingly being recognised that the global DNS is a point of vulnerability to hackers intent on perpetrating distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.
And companies setting up their own DNS servers to support a new domain will need to ensure that they have substantial excess capability to ensure continuity of service in the face of a DDOS.”
“Verisign has had a lot of experience in that area so we’re partnering with them so that we can offer a complete management solution to corporations looking to set up their own new gTLD.”
"Melbourne IT is also expecting a boost to its online brand management business from the new gTLDs, as companies review their online brand strategies"]
“Corporate customers who already use us to protect their various different domains, such as brand.com and brand.com.au , and brand.co.uk will no doubt also want us to look after their new dot.brand domain.”
Tonkin is also a director of the global Internet governing organisation – the International Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), -
which held the second of its tri-ennial meetings in Sydney last week.
Tonkin said that there was vigorous debate about a report on potential solutions to trademark issues at last week's ICANN meeting.
As a result, the next version of the new gTLD Draft Applicant guidebook being prepared for release at the Seoul meeting of ICANN in October is expected to include some proposals for better trademark protection.
"ICANN is continuing to work on the other overarching issues of demand and economic analysis, impact on security and stability of root zone scaling, and malicious conduct” he said.
“ ICANN is planning to resolve these remaining issues this year to the satisfaction of the ICANN community, and anticipates that applications for new top-level domains will be accepted
starting in the first quarter of 2010."
Tonkin said that ICANN’s plan envisages a notice period of around 4 months being specified once the final version of the implementation guidebook report has been signed off.
And once the four month period had elapsed companies and cities will be able to apply to be accredited as the operator of a new gTLD.
Tonkin said that existing registry managers such as Verisign, Afilias , Neustar, and even Australia’s AusRegistry are logical candidates to win much of the back-end
infrastructure business generated by corporations looking to have their own gTLD.
Verisign runs the popular dot.tv domain for Tuvalu as well as dot.com whilst Afilias operates the dot info, dot.org, dot mobi and dot asia registries.
Neustar is also a major player with its dot us dot biz, dot tel and dot travel domains.
Operators of the bigger country code registry operators, such as in China, or Germany or in the UK are also likely candidates to play a major role in the new TLDs, said Tonkin.
UK registry operator, Nominet, for example, is a leading candidate to run the registries for the new TLDs being sought for both Scotland and Wales, said Tonkin.
Another Australian company also expecting to profit from the new system is the publicly listed Dark Blue Sea.
Chief Financial Officer Greg Platz said that the general confusion in the marketplace around the new gTLDs may well have the perverse effect of making dot.com names more valuable.
Dark Blue Sea holds a significant portfolio of dot.com names as an investor, and could also invest in buying names in some of the new domains if they look like being successful, said Platz.
“We don’t see them as a threat” he said, and also ruled out applying for new TLDs.
“We won’t be applying to be a registry operator for new gTLD’s” said Platz, even though the company already has a registrar business known as Fabulous.
“We don’t currently offer all the different extensions as we cater mainly to the domainer market” he said.
For more information go to
www.melbourneit.com
www.darkbluesea.com
www.icann.org
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