ICANN Concludes Cape Town Annual Meeting

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) (www.icann.org) today announced that this week over 735 participants from 91 countries successfully concluded the ICANN Cape Town Annual Meeting, which included industry and technical leaders, Internet users from Africa and around the world and Ministers and Governmental representatives.

ICANN's Board approved the finalisation of a Request for Proposals for designating a successor operator for the .NET registry. The current .NET Registry Agreement was signed in May 2001, and will expire on 30 June 2005. VeriSign is eligible to be considered for designation as the successor registry operator.

The procedure for selecting the successor operator was developed through an open and transparent process incorporating opportunities for public review and comment at multiple stages. Completed .NET proposals will be due in January 2005.

This was the 20th meeting of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). The Country Code Domain Name Supporting Organisation (ccNSO) moved forward on discussions regarding its ccTLD Principles, and announced their intention to review the GAC paper regarding the Principles through its appropriate Working Group.

Additionally, the CCNSO and the GAC have established a joint liaison group which will identify issues of common interest.
 
Frank Fowlie, the new ICANN Ombudsman, was introduced to the ICANN community at the Cape Town meeting and he announced the posting of his framework document that can be found on the ICANN website.