ICANN to Finalize Registrar Guidelines This Week

Computergram International, March 8, 1999

By Nick Patience

With the domain name registrar market about to be opened to competition, potential registrars are wondering when the guidelines that will outline a minimum set of requirements to enter the business are going to be published. ICANN posted draft guidelines in early February for public comment, and voted on the guidelines at its board meeting in Singapore last week. But the final document is not yet available even though ICANN is due to start accepting applications to become one of the first registrars on Monday March 15.

ICANN president Mike Roberts says he hopes to have them published on the ICANN web site by this Friday, March 12 and the march 15 date is under review by ICANN and the Department of Commerce. However, he did say that there are no major changes to the guidelines posted in draft form on the ICANN site last month, just "20 small changes" he says. Specifically, he says none of the financial aspects outlined in the draft have been changed, which are the parts most observers are watching the closest. These include requirements for $100,000 of liquid capital, $500,000 of liability insurance, $2,500 or $1,000 application fees and a fixed fee of between $3,000 to $6,000 to start accepting registrations.

But most controversially, the draft also called for a fee to be paid monthly to ICANN by the registrar companies based on the number of domains they register. The amount has not been fixed but it could be anything up to $1 per name, according to the draft. This, says Roberts, is one number that may well be changed in the final version. But before that can happened, ICANN's budget can be finalized, ensuring that the sum of all the fees does not exceed the amount required to run ICANN, supporters of which recently started a pledge drive to raise short-term capital. After all, ICANN is supposed to be a non-profit organization. Roberts says the board will settle on a budget at the time of its next meeting, in Berlin in late May, with a public consultation process happening before that, presumably via email and written comments. But there will be some sort of figure released this week in the final accreditation guidelines, which should make things a bit clearer.

Roberts expressed himself happy with last week's meeting and noted that the compromise reached over the domain name supporting organization (DNSO) "set the tone," for the rest of the meeting. He says there was even a round of applause at the end of the whole session.