By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch
The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on Monday re-issued a request for proposals to manage the sensitive IANA contract. IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority function, includes the management of the central root zone of the internet domain name system, the allocation of internet protocol addresses to the Regional Internet Registries and other core parts of the internet infrastructure.
The re-issuing became necessary after the NTIA (which is part of the US Commerce Department) declared failure in its original call for tenders in March, just before a meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which has performed the function since 1998 and was said by many to be the sole bidder. NTIA’s announcement that it had “received no proposals that met the requirements requested by the global community” was seen as a slap in the face of ICANN. The nonprofit private organisation on 12 January opened a first window for applications for new top level domains (TLDs), an activity watched with some suspicion by many trademark owners as well as governments.
The re-issuing of the IANA contract request for proposals now comes at a rather unlucky moment for ICANN, which had to stop the TLD application procedure only some hours before the deadline last Thursday because of software problems and had to concede that parts of data from some applicants had been visible to other applicants. A new CEO at ICANN expected to come on board soon will have his hands full.
The re-issued contract is here.
[…] The US National Telecommunications and Information Adiministration has decided to reissue the the sensitive IANA contract. The contract includes management of the central root zone of the internet domain name system and allocation of intent protocol addresses with the regional internet registries. During the ICANN meeting it was seen that many to be the sole bidder. This is a interesting change for ICANN after having a glitch and not being able to close the applications for the new gTLD system. To read further on this story click here. […]
[…] On Monday the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration requested for proposals to manage the IANA contract. The management of the IANA contract includes managing the allocation of the internet protocol addresses to the Internet Registries. The reissuing of the contract happened after it failed to be successful for the original call for proposals last March. ICANN has done the job since 1998 and now unluckily has had many problems with their TLD application that failed. The new ICANN CEO will have his hands full in the future. To read further on this topic click here. […]