[Chapter-delegates] ICANN Support for African gTLD applicants

[Joly MacFie]

At the North American Regional At-Large Organization (NARALO)
teleconference yesterday Annalisa Rogers of ISOC-SF raised the topic
of the statement of the African ICANN community at ICANN38 in
Brussels.  It asks for support of African gTLD applicants, mainly
civil society, NGOs and non for profit organizations, but also for
entrepreneurs, given the developing state of the continent's digital
economy.
http://www.atlarge.icann.org/announcements/announcement-24jun10-en.htm

Specifically the support to be provided to applicants of new gTLDs in
Africa should include, but not be limited to the following:

*Financial, by reducing the application and the on-going fees
** Waiving the cost of Program Development ($26k).
** Waiving the Risk/Contingency cost ($60k).
** Lowering the application cost ($100k)    (from $185k)
** Waiving the Registry fixed fees ($25k per calendar year), and
charge the Registry-Level Transaction Fee only ($0.25 per domain name
registration or renewal).
** The reduced cost to be paid incrementally, which will give the
African applicants more time to raise money, and investors will be
more encouraged to fund an application that passes the initial
evaluation.

*Linguistic, by translating all the application documents, especially
the Applicant Guidebook, in the six UN languages

*Legal, by assisting the applicants in preparing their applications properly.

*Technical, by
** helping the applicants to define the infrastructure options,
** addressing the issue of infrastructure problems in some African
countries; such as IPV6, internet connectivity etc.

Annalisa is drafting a statement of support on behalf of NARALO.

I am thinking this is something that many chapters might want to
support 1) individually, 2) through their local At-Large
Organizations, and 3) by lobbying their local representatives on the
ICANN Government Advisory Committee (GAC).

Annallisa, please circulate the wording of your support letter here when ready.

joly

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Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
  Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
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