The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ADAM PEAKE: to manage their online identities, to bring new geographies online, to bring new brands from the global south online, to bring more content, access to more content and available connectivity.
I don't think you really need to hear too much from me, I will run through speakers and try to do this in a way that will also introduce what they're going to talk about.
I will begin from across the table. He's an ICANN board member, member of the community, background is an international banker, leading in the financial sector, venture capital firms. But also a business strategist who's very active in the global south bringing development to what we were thinking of underserved regions.
So he will give us a perspective as an ICANN board member and also member of the community about the discussions we're having around enhancing what's available to you as top level domain names in the new gTLD programs.
The next is the leader of the registry Africa group, which other managers of the dot Africa domain name and city names for Capetown, which are managed by them. Bringing up a perspective of someone who has been bringing in new communities in the domain space.
Jennifer Chung worked for one of the leaders of the dot Asia corporation and manager of the .KIDS domain name. Many of you will know her as a member of the Advisory Group and also leader of the IGF support association. A great supporter of the IGF. Coming soon, we hope, will be Ram Mohan who's the chief strategy officer for a company called identity digital, which is running the largest number of new TLDs, around 500. He's the current board member, and chair of the Advisory Committee.
So he will join us when he's finished with another session in another room. We have a quite packed quite a packed schedule.
And last but not least is my colleague Kristy Buckley who is leading our applicant support program. Kristy is online and will give a perspective from how the staff is organizing this particular activity and what what we're hoping for and what we're achieving at the moment with the work that the new gTLD program and applicant support program are working on. With that, I'd like to begin turning over to Jennifer and Lucky. Lucky, I hope your microphone will be working, to give us a perspective as two people representing organizations that introduce top level domain names in an earlier round when we introduced new TLDs to the Internet.
Lucky for dot Africa. And Jennifer, I think if you would like to begin and here's a microphone.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Thanks, Adam, for that really lovely introduction. So I'll talk a little bit about the experience dot Asia had. I like it say it's one of the middle children, but not part of the new round. It was quite interesting for dot Asia, because it was in response to dot EU which is with the CC spot. It was an initiative to support the Asia wide collaboration and upholding the ethos of the Asia Pacific community.
Then there was quite a lot of will, political will and community will to have this name space. It pioneered quite a lot of different things, our sunset, our sunrise policies were now used in a lot of different ways when you look at the different regular registry policies that you see now.
And it offered a course of the fast track that was passed through back in 2009, 2009, so we started offering international domain names in our name space starting from 2011.
Now moving back a little bit and talking about the newer the new gTLD we manage .KIDS which is a for kids by kids name space. That came in the 2012 round.
I'm sure Kristy will be really happy to talk to you more about the applicant support program, but one of the very interesting things about .KIDS, in the last round it was the only recipient for the African support program. So we are happy to share lessons we've learned, happy to share the feedback, and of course, we're looking forward to learning more about the applicant support program coming up. And I think I'll stop here because I could talk at length, but I'd love for Adam to moderate.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Thank you, Jen. I think the link between dot Asia is one as you said not a legacy but an in betweener is an important one in the legacy of kids. If you'd give us some of the work you've done with the city names and the work you've done but what motivated you to apply for at GTD in the 2012 round how's it being used and any words of wisdom about what you're thinking for the next round as well and applicant support? And over to you and fingers crossed this works.
Jen has very kindly offered to continue a little bit and perhaps touch on the questions I was asking Lucky. I will just pop to the desk and see what we can find over there. So Jennifer, thank you very much for your help.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Thank you, Adam. Like I said, I'm happy to talk more about, you know, what we were thinking about behind some of the reasons while not really for dot Asia, I think many of us know the reasons why dot Asia was applied for. But I'll talk a little bit about .KIDS. I think it was really at the time a response to children's rights, children welfare community concerns over the overcommercialization of .KIDS wanting this name space to become exemplary, you know, gTLD with children's rights and interests at heart.
So something central to the .KIDS name space is that there was a best practices and guiding principles that were craft and created by child led organizations, children's rights and welfare organization to make sure this is something they can back.
They formed part of the Advisory Committee that we all often consult with, when we come across interesting cases of, you know, possible abuse, there's a very, very strong, strict policies on many of the categories that go beyond above and beyond many of the different registry operator policies right now. So happy to talk about that.
And another important thing I wanted to bring up is there's always this notion when you start applying for a new gTLD, you envision different uses for it. But when we look at the real use cases, we've always been surprised because we were like, oh, okay, it's been used for not only educators and children who actually want to, you know, express themselves online as well, we also saw some interesting clothing brands use interesting .KIDS names such as copycat .KIDS to use to launch their products and look at their markets.
We looked at future leaders, .KIDS as well, and they actually provide high quality educational materials for children to look at, like tutorial modules as well. And also art clubs dot Asia is an interesting example that actually spans both I guess the child community or youth or child community and also the youths of Asia as I guess the name and identity that they have online.
One thing that I also looked at when we were going through this whole idea of, you know, how can we foster innovation, how can we use this this opportunity, having a gTLD, having a new one, how can we use this to further our business models, because there's a lot of different use cases, as well as pushing forward the innovation in policy making.
Three things I want to highlight, having active suspension quite early on in the domain name lifecycle to serve as a warning to people who might look at registration for nefarious purposes to kind of back off and understand that this name space is being organized, being governed by policies that are quite, you know, open for innovation, but definitely guarding against abuse.
Having stable pricing policies is always a very good use case for innovation, because a lot of small, medium businesses, a lot of individual entrepreneurs really want know that they're able to use this name space to grow their business, which they might be starting, start ups or something like that, to be able to fit that into a start up budget.
And finally, I guess this is back to this ICANN world as well, to foster innovation and inclusion to, you know, I think it's happening now as well, to stop kind of overrequiring RSPs or registry service process for a lot of different things.
I think when we're looking at our business model and use cases, we want to have predictability, to be able to look at how we can grow innovation, how we can introduce this to new markets, how we can have new markets interested to apply for this upcoming new round as well.
So hopefully that gives us a little bit more introduction of what we're thinking. Back to you, Adam.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Thank you, Jen, that was brilliant. I'm going to try Lucky again. I help you're unmute and able to speak to us.
>> LUCKY MASILELA: Good afternoon. Yes, I hope I'm clear. Yes.
Maybe you can help me, I don't
>> ADAM PEAKE: I can't hear you but I see your microphone seems to be working there.
>> KRISTY BUCKLEY: Adam, I can hear Lucky online. This is Kristy.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Kristy I see you trying to say something and we can't hear you either.
>> LUCKY MASILELA: Oh, okay, you can't hear me there?
>> ADAM PEAKE: It seams the audio Zoom isn't coming into the room. I wonder if I could put you on the spot and jump around and give us introductions and comments on what you heard from Jen in particular, but also your thoughts on the program, particularly notions around innovation and inclusion. That would be great. And apologies for the
>> Thanks, Adam. When Adam mentioned to me a few hours back that I need to talk about domain names and inclusion and innovation, I was really scratching my head how to contact domain name with innovation. I can understand inclusion bit of it.
If you look at the whole digital divide inclusion aspects of it, there are three lines that we can think of. The first fault line is along the line of access to Internet.
How we can ensure that the people across the world, irrespective of where they are based, can access Internet uninterrupted. So that's the first fault line that needs to be addressed.
The second fault line is the fault line of bias. So just to give you an idea, on the first fault line, there are even today in 2024, around 2 billion people don't have access to Internet. Between north and south, in north, 93% of the people have access to Internet. In south, it may go up to 42%.
Between capital city, between urban city, and rural city, the percentage varies from 92% in urban to anywhere between 20% to 30% and for some cases even more.
So the percentages varies a lot based on where you're set up. Access to Internet is the first fault line that we need to address if we want to improve digital inclusion.
The second fault line is international bias. As far as we're aware that Internet is a result of human biases that we live in. So if you look at it, there was a data that the facial recognition that is used in case of dark skinned colored women, 44% of cases the facial recognition may be 40, compared to 1% into a White male.
So it sort of reflects the people who are developing the Internet and working behind it. So the second fault line is the line around biases.
The third fault line is a line of innovation. As we go around the world, there is a challenge of innovation and access to innovation. Whether it is an invention around infrastructure, whether it's innovation around artificial intelligence or the latest coming out with quantum computing, everything, right?
So the third fault line, which is a fault line of innovation, that impacts how people are included in the Internet of today and will be included in the Internet of tomorrow.
So if we look at all these lines where ICANN really comes handy, which is access to Internet. Now, if you look at the new programs that we're working on, right? The new programs is an issue of digital identity. We believe that as more and more domain names are allowed to exist, there will be more people who will create better identity on the Internet. And that will obviously improve the digital inclusion or access to Internet for a wider group of people who are entrepreneurs, who are individuals who want to create an identity on the Internet.
So new mundeal helps in that way. So as we improve national domain names, then we have people who are of different languages, they will at least have an identity which is a non Latin script but an identity they can relate with. That's an important part of this whole ICANN initiative.
The third one is universal acceptance. We can talk about a lot in different I was told by Adam not to touch about that in details because we have another program to do that. But that's an important part of how ICANN helps in the programs.
The second thing is of course the whole grant, which Martin is here who has been leading it for a while from the ICANN side. The grant program is essentially designed for people for people underresourced areas to help them get Internet. The people who are working on the different parts of the world, ensuring that they have more people in terms of infrastructure, in terms of innovations, the people who are not represented well are somehow financially supported.
So that they can access the grant program and can get into the Internet. So that's the other critical part of it that we solved.
Do you want know continue? We have time? Okay.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Thank you very much. I like the yeah, I like the three thought line ideas.
Kristy, would you like to have another go and see if we can hear you in the room? We can see that the microphone was working and perhaps now the captioning will show that you're also coming through. Over to you, Kristy, please.
>> KRISTY BUCKLEY: Thanks, Adam. Can you hear me okay?
>> ADAM PEAKE: Yes, yes.
>> KRISTY BUCKLEY: Great. It's great when technology works.
So greetings, everyone, thanks very much, Adam. I wanted to just say hello from Vancouver, Canada, where it's 4:00 in the morning here, so apologies if I'm not entirely awake yet.
But it's wonderful to see everyone online and also in the room. Thanks for joining this session today.
I wanted to share a few observations about digital inclusivity and the Domain Name System, and also highlight how ICANN's applicant support program is intended to foster broader and more diverse participation in technical Internet infrastructure.
As some of my colleagues have highlighted, we're already seeing exciting examples of innovation and global participation in gTLDs or generic top level domains and we hope it will open more doors for both.
One thing I've observed is concepts and methodologies for accessing digital inclusion do not typically include any mention of technical Internet infrastructure like gTLDs nor the need for acceptance of them with different languages or scripts. We have another session related to this tomorrow.
And so while definitions of digital inclusion vary, the focus generally falls on access, connectivity, skills, and participation.
However, when infrastructure is discussed, it usually refers to Internet connectivity, devices, or online services.
The underlying technical infrastructure of the Domain Name System, and who has the ability to participate in or shape that infrastructure often gets overlooked when talking about digital inclusion.
And as I think about this, it actually reminds me of some of the previous work that I did in a previous life in Global Food Systems.
So we know that everyone needs to eat food, but when we look at a plate of food, we rarely think about the complex network of local and global systems that brought those ingredients, those foods together on the plate.
And the same holds true for the Internet. Millions of people use it every day, and yet very few people think about the infrastructure underlying it, the policies governing it, and who has opportunities to participate in managing that infrastructure or in shaping those policies.
I know that many in the Internet community are eager to see greater participation and accessibility and inclusion in managing Internet infrastructure. And one key opportunity that I see to advance this is ICANN's applicant support program, which Jennifer had spoke about earlier.
It's often described as a sort of scholarship for gTLD applicants and it aims to make the process more accessible globally. It offers fee reductions and capacity development and access to professional developmental resources. And in doing so the program fosters the intent is to foster more innovation and participation in that technical infrastructure of the Internet, which is, again, critical but often overlooked aspect of digital inclusion.
I'll speak of it more in detail about the applicant support program, but for now, I just wanted to emphasize that it's a sort of tangible way to help foster the future of the Internet inclusive and innovative and globally representative of the next billion users.
Thanks.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Thank you. We finally got to hear you as well as see you. Thank you.
Lucky, perhaps I think it's time to try you again. And we're having some success getting people online and speaking, so again, if we can come back to that original question that Jen started to cover, when you applied for dot Africa and also the city names that we mentioned, Johberg and Durbin, et cetera, what was the motivation and inspiration and hope for those TLDs, hope in how they would be used and have those hopes been met? And a little bit of also for you what's next.
So hoping that the audio works. Over to you, Lucky, and thank you.
>> LUCKY MASILELA: Hi, hope you can hear me now. Am I audible?
>> ADAM PEAKE: Yes, you are. Thank you.
>> LUCKY MASILELA: Thank you. Yeah, look, thanks, Adam. I think one can answer the question in multiple facets following the topic around digital inclusion and some of the inhibitors.
So we broke ranks in 2012 and we applied for that Africa, dot Capetown, dot Durbin, those four names and we had to make sure that Africa is participating in this digital world, in the digital space.
More than anything else, we had this dream that the African community felt that they had missed out in the previous round and they wanted to have this domain name dot Africa being utilized not only as a digital identity, but as an instrument that would be used to unite the content as an instrument that would be used to express the cultural interests, the cultural diversity of the continent.
And that is what was underlying some of the important pointers towards the application. And for us, it was also one of those great honors by the African community to support us and also identify us to be the ones leading this campaign for applying for the domain name. Now I'm referring to dot Africa when I say the domain name, and also to be the administrators of the name. And we have also to do the marketing for us really it gave us a lot of of comfort and confidence that was bestowed on us been the continent.
Now, the interesting thing was we're talking about this inclusiveness where we succeeded, we must also try and look where we failed. Because it is where we failed where we need to be focusing it to understand how we go further.
In that last round of domain names or gTLDs, there were at least a 1,900 names. And there were 13 names that were applied for from Africa. The entire continent, continent of 1.3, 1.4 billion people, only 13 names were applied for. Of all the 13 names, only five are still active. And I'm referring to dot Africa, dot Capetown, dot Durbin, and dot NTN.
Now the dream begins to falter immediately, the fault line, because the African names they do not see the end of day. And now we're looking at the next round.
The first round on its own had its own challenges. Challenge of pricing. 185,000 per name, per domain name, and it is also restricting. When you think about it on the continent, how do we begin to get the continent of Africa to be included in this space.
Now we look at only 13 names and most of those 13 names, if not all of those 13 names, the applicants of those names were all in the southern hemisphere or in southern Africa. And up until today those names are still administered by entities that would be based in southern Africa, or for the rest of the world or for the rest of the continent.
So for us, this is a litmus test of the success of using inclusiveness, digital inclusiveness by looking at where have we succeeded and where have we failed as a continent.
Or, as an ecosystem in the DNS space. Are the domain names beginning to achieve on what is required or what is expected from us?
When we look at the gTLD names and look at how they have performed in the last ten years, we can still see that in particular, the geographics have not been able to have some stellar performance that is outstanding. Dot Africa on its own today is ranked fourth in the geographic names and this is nowhere what would be ideal for a continental name. We should be looking at being closer to dot Asia as an example who are the leaders in the pack.
But all other names are becoming difficult to achieve. We can only look at the CCTLD and say they are the teller performers, and you compare the same number in South Africa across the continent, you realize that again the biggest challenge with you talk of inclusiveness, is that a continent of 1.4 billion people has only shy of 3.5 million registrations.
Now 3.5 million registrations in this continent is very small. It just shows on the degree or the percentage of penetration or the usage. And we need to find out where are these bottlenecks, where are we losing the plot? Why is it that we are not participating?
One of the things is free names, people not being literate or being a viable space, or other things that we still must find. I think the DNS market, the Africa DNS market study must still find out why we are not growing.
But one of the things that I was thinking about earlier on today was if we continue having free names, they are not going to be a solution for the continent. If you think of the gmail as an example, it is offered for free and it is really put a damper on all the other gTLDs and it puts a damper on to any other gTLD that would enter the market. We need to have a conversation about to what extent will the gmail continue being provided, especially on the continent. Because it is really it is a [?] among the difficult CCTLDs in the continent.
Now managing those CCTLDs, we still have CCTLDs managed outside the continent. Now that on its own limits on this inclusiveness that we want to achieve and talk to. Now it also makes it difficult for our own software developers to participate and build and develop their own solutions.
Now this immediately takes me to the next round. Just looking at the next round, if the previous round in 2014 gave the results that we have the numbers that I presented, and the demise of 13 to five names, what will the next round bring for Africa as a whole?
It seems like we are heading for another similar failure for the continent, but the rest of the world might be fine. If today it is projected that a domain name will be 285,000 per name and discounted at 85%, and you think of the economies on the continent, what's important, is it a domain name or bread on the table, or take your kids to school, the priorities shift and such that there's not going to be a single entity or company that will learn to pay whether it's 35,000 U.S. dollars or 285. I do not see that happening.
And the net round means it will still be excluding a lot of players from the continent.
There is a round that has just begun of your registry service providers. It's equally the evaluation process or the mechanism for that requires exorbitant amount of money to the region of 90,000 U.S. dollars to be evaluated to be a service provider.
That immediately marginalizes all the service providers on the continent. You will find that the service providers that will be participating in the next round are going to be from the northern hemisphere, will have nothing coming from the southern hemisphere. Or the third world countries.
And that also further stamps this approval on exclusivity. And I can go on and talk about solutions, how do we think we should do this?
Not necessarily providing the names of this process for free for the continent, but creating enabling mechanisms. And we are discussing in this direction. And I hope, you know, as we look at the challenges and the beauty for celebrating dot Africa, I thought let me bring another dimension on some of the challenges that I think need to be addressed as we discuss the digital inclusion. I will take a break and come back to teal with other issues. Thank you.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Thanks very much, Lucky. The solutions part, perhaps, Jen, you can think of ideas from what Lucky's been presenting to us here about what are the solutions.
I will mention that you're quite right about the challenges, Lucky, with the notion of 1.4 billion people and on the 3.5 million names registered, we have looked at that. We've done ICANN and the community has looked at DNS studies, marketplace studies for Africa and tried to respond to that with different ways to encourage. And of course the securities, the coalition for digital Africa bringing it together, not just ICANN, but the TLD sorry, the country code top level domain community from Africa and also yourself and other operators, the smart Africa groups and others who are working more directly in the development processes.
And perhaps some of the ICANN board members who are in the room might want to comment at some point on some of the work we're doing there.
But Kristy, I wonder if we can come back you to and if you can say a few words about what we're doing in engagement activities for the next round and how the applicant support program is going to address some of the issues that Lucky referenced there. If that's all right.
Over to you, Kristy.
>> KRISTY BUCKLEY: Thanks so much, Adam. Lucky, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and observations in the last round.
And I think my understanding in working very closely with the ICANN community on developing the next round and in particular the applicant support program is that there's a lot of emphasis and attention and desire to make sure that the next round has global, diverse participation. And one of the opportunities for helping to support that is the applicant support program.
In fact, the community provided guidance recommendations on outreach and communications for the applicant support program which asked ICANN to emphasize underserved communities, nonprofits, social enterprises, and community groups.
And so far on the applicant support program which just opened to receive applications last month, outreach and communications for that has really only targeted underserved regions so far and not at all in developed economies just yet. The applicant support program is open for 12 months and the idea behind that is to give applicants a really long runway to learn about the program, build their understanding of it and hopefully apply. And when they do apply, get access to all of the supports available, which includes not just the fee reductions in the g evaluation fee, but also access to volunteer service providers as well as capacity development program that ICANN is constructing right now.
And so what's interesting, just in the first months, and I can't provide detailed numbers just yet because I don't want to take the wind out of our sails on Wednesday when we announce the numbers, but just in the first month we are already seeing interest in the applicant support program from all corners of the world and all regions, including Africa. Which is really fantastic because it's only been open for just a few weeks.
But we're also under sort of no illusion that ICANN, the ICANN community can do this alone. So while we're putting a lot of resources and effort into spreading awareness and understanding about the next round and the opportunities therein, especially to advance digital inclusion, we're also relying on the ICANN community and the broader Internet Governance community to spread the word, to raise awareness, to help people understand the relevance of the Domain Name System and the gTLDs to the work they're already doing.
That's where this broader community including the IGF comes in. I will note that similar to the 2012 round but again only .KIDS was able to take advantage of it, the fee reduction provided to supported gTLD applicants is intended to be meaningful and significant. And so this will be a 75% to 85% discount on the gTLD evaluation fee. That's the base fee of evaluating the application.
But also on some conditional evaluations. So for example, if you are supporting an applicant that applies for a geographic name, that's a conditional evaluation that would also be receiving the same discount of 75% to 85%. If you're a community priority evaluation applicant, you're applying for a top level domain that represents a community, that's another evaluation fee that, again, would be receiving that 75% to 85% discount.
So the idea is to, you know, provide financial support not just as a one time, you know, discount, but also to think about the whole lifecycle and journey of the applicant and how do we support and sustain more diverse entrance into this space over the course of that lifecycle.
So ICANN did research to understand, you know, what others of similar programs like the applicant support program tend to provide. And it's usually beyond the one time up front investment. You're providing that long term capacity development, training, and support.
For support applicants that become registered operators like .KIDS, there would also be a discount in the annual base registry agreement fees. So that's something that we're, again, trying to help the first few years of the support applicant becoming that registered operator to help them get up to speed in the market and run their business. We're providing that discount in the longer term for the first three years post operation.
I know that there's been some discussion about the fee for the registry service providers and even I've heard some folks in the community talk about the fact that, you know, that was not considered in terms of, like, how do we provide support for registry service providers.
It just wasn't a policy recommendation. But it's something that has gained a lot of interest and discussion since the registry service provider program has launched. And you know, I think it's interesting to consider that in terms of the future continuous improvement of a future next rounds, how can we further improve the opportunities for diverse participation in all aspects of the next round, not just on the gTLD side, but also the RSP side.
Adam, did I address your question? Was there anything else you wanted me to speak to?
>> ADAM PEAKE: That's brilliant. I think what's cheer from this is that there's many thousands of hours of work looking into reviewing the 2012 process and making improvements for this latest round. While it sounds when we say the word ICANN has done, it's important to remember that this is a community of volunteers. The staff guide the process, but these ideas and these improvements, these mechanisms come from our multi stakeholder community, of course.
I was wondering, so we mentioned perhaps board member might want to respond on an ASP related prop issue or one of the comments from from Lucky. But really, Sagid, if that's something you want to pick up on or we'd like to continue on to Jen and the opportunities and challenges.
>> SAGID: I was talking about the three lines that were causing digital divide. If you look at the first line that talked about which is how to make people access Internet, I think it's very important to create the ability for different people to participate in the system.
At the end of the day, if we believe in the cases that completion creates innovation, then the more open we make it for people to join through different programs, the better competition we'll have, the better innovation we'll have, and the whole ecosystem will flourish.
On the program we've done a lot of work. Martin, I know you wanted to say something, or Becky.
>> BECKY: Thanks. Kristy's talked a lot about the applicant support program, but it is based on longstanding policy and policy that the community implemented to support diversity and inclusiveness on the Internet.
And the support as Kristy noted will be meaningful in terms of both the application fee reduction, also enabling applicants supported applicants to participate in auctions in a meaningful way.
And unlike the 2012 round, this year we in this round we will be contemplating support, ongoing support to enable the domain to get up and running. So defer, discounted ICANN fees and the like. All of that are going to be very important.
Ultimately, there needs to be a market that supports a domain. So it's not intended to be forever, but the goal would be to provide enough support to ensure that the the domain is able to operate and able to educate people about its existence and create a market and create interest in it.
So it's a very important aspect of increasing access to the Internet locally across the world.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Thank you, Becky. Thanks, Sagid.
>> LUCKY MASILELA: Adam.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Yes.
>> LUCKY MASILELA: If I may comment.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Please, Lucky.
>> LUCKY MASILELA: And those comments that were made really regarding the solutions and how this applicant support program is being implemented and rolled out to include people from the underdeveloped world or countries. But one of the things that I want us to think of and consider, think of it very strongly, while we're talking of being in other mechanisms, training, and other support mechanisms, what if we make this leap of faith and say, based on the evidence that we have, there is empirical evidence that apparently the four gTLDs in Africa, dot Africa, dot Capetown, Durbin, and Johberg, they have not been successful, but they've been successful in the fact that they are still active ten years later and growing. Dot Africa has just turned the corner. There is growth.
What if we use the very lessons that we have in our hands that we have seen, and allow those very entities to be the ones working with the local communities to give training to the local communities. Those potential applicants on the continent to be trained or given support by the guys who are on the ground, the guys that have seen it, the guys that have walked the journey.
And I'm referring here to registry Africa. Registry Africa has been very active in growing these domain names, and I believe we've been successful. I believe that the model that is a business model that we have shared at the last Africa strategy session in Istanbul where we believe that if we were to create a model whereby there's a sponsor or an applicant, and that applicant would be a city or a municipality, a county or even a community, and these would be the entities that apply for a domain name. And that domain name, they would appoint an operator, consistent with the registry and registry back end provider, and this could be a local provider. And this could be done as a build and transfer basis.
And there would be building this on behalf of this city or municipality. The interest for the city and the municipality is to provide service to its residents. And derive revenue from the utilities or the services that they're providing to their citizens.
And out of that, they grant each citizen, each utility holder, a domain name, an email address an email address. And that email address would enhance the delivery of bills and the settlement of bills based on what would be utilized.
We believe such a model when applied or implemented on the continent in underserved or underdeveloped countries, it would attract more players, more participants. And this needs some kind of understanding that we have seen it, we have walked this ground, we think we understand what is the best mechanism of bringing about inclusion.
And this is my submission to this audience that consider this business model of an applicant being a city municipality, gaining or getting access to their discount, appointing a registry operator and the back end provider to be the ones who are doing the work, and building websites around alongside that. Providing and we are looking now at the next wave of the domain name.
For us, the next wave for domain names when we talk of inclusivity and innovation is getting more of our own participating eCommerce. eCommerce is the next great space for domain names. If we can participate extensively, solid in that space, would have been able to achieve a lot in this space.
Thanks, Adam.
>> BECKY: I just want to say to something that Lucky mentioned that very important, part of the program for applicant support will be sort of pro bono assistance in terms of we're looking for people to help applicants with writing applications, understanding the legal issues. But also the business models. And so what Lucky was saying about learning the lessons from what dot Africa, you know, dot Capetown have done and how they've grown and the insights that you're providing, Lucky, are critically important. I hope we will have a lot of people who will volunteer to be part of the applicant support to get that kind of hands on, on the ground experience with it.
But I know that's something that the African support program is putting together is the outreach for the pro bono for the sort of nonmonetary but very critical support in terms of business models and dealing with the paperwork and the like.
And then you want to okay. So there's also a question from Neil in the chat about the prospect of an applicant for the registry service providing pre evaluation form.
The primary the cost the cost for the evaluation of back end service providers is like the cost of the gTLD program in general, cost recovery. So there is a $92,000 projection, but that is based on a certain number of applicants. And the fee itself will go down if we get more applicants for that.
The other thing that's really important to keep in mind is in the last round, every evaluation, every application, included an evaluation of the back end service provider.
And so there was a cost to the applicant in the form of that evaluation. That won't be here this time because the registry service providers are being evaluated on a sort of once and done process.
So so there are savings that will and benefits that will accrue to supported applicants and applicants in underserved regions from the program itself. And finally, the question of sort of whether there should be applicant support for back end registries raises really important stability and security issues.
Back concerned vis providers back end service providers are going to be businesses that are operating top level domains all around the world, and the very last thing that we should allow to happen is to not thoroughly evaluate the ability of that service provider to provide high quality service. And that costs money. That evaluation costs money.
So although I think we understand and agree with the desire to have globally located back end service providers, we have to balance that with the absolutely critical stability and security requirements and take into account the fact that this this once and done evaluation process will benefit applicants globally who will not have to bear the costs of those as part of the evaluation process.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Thanks, Becky, and thanks for the oh, go ahead, Martin, please.
>> MARTIN: Hi, this is Martin. Sorry for just to add to what Becky said, another big difference between the first round was that there were just a handful back end providers. Actually there's now a market of choice, including the nonprofit organizations and CCs. So you have much more offer and much more reasonable pricing as well. Just wanted to add that part.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Thank you, Martin. Thank you, Becky, for your comments. Very helpful and kind of you.
Just wanted to welcome Ram Mohan to the room. I know you've been much demand in other sessions. Ram is the chief strategy officer for identity digital and one of the largest operators of the new TLD batch from 2012. And wanted to say we've been talking about Lucky and Jen have been talking about their experience from 2012 and Jen from before with dot Asia and how that's worked. And Lucky's made some very important points about inclusion and how we can get people applying from the African content, et cetera.
But please make an introduction and give us some ideas. Thank you.
>> RAM MOHAN: Thank you so much. Can you hear me? Okay, great. Thank you so much and my apologies for joining this session late. I was speaking at another one.
So I want to focus my comments on in two areas. One is that we look at innovation with a lower case I rather than innovation with an upper case I. Let me explain what that means.
Often the successor programs is only seen years out, and in the meanwhile, you have many prognosticators who pre decide and who say that a program has failed or has succeeded based on conventional metrics. Metrics, for example, in the domain name industry such as how many names have been registered.
And you find especially a prevalent logic inside of the domain name industry that focuses on success almost directly correlated to the number of domains that people have registered.
But I'd like to say that that is actually a myth. If you look at my own company and the 300 plus domain names that we have, I can tell you that we have success in all of them, not in the way of looking at it purely from a commercial, you know, is it a profit making enterprise one TLD at a time.
So one way of looking at innovation is, for us, has been in the existing domain name space prior to the various rounds that ICANN has introduced as the gold standard has been dot comin the gTLD space and companies applying for application for a dot com.
And it's somewhere along seen if 17 or 18 characters that you have to string together to get a domain name. If I want to get Ram's studio, it's hard to get. It's probably gone.
Even if I type in Ram's studio, even that's hard to get. What you'll find is engines that come back and say how about Ram's studio online.com, how about Ram's digital studio.com, et cetera.
The lower case I innovation that has happened is with the advent of new TLDs and the availability of them, is that I can go and get Ram.studio or Ram.photography or whatever it is. And there is innovation that's come about just because of that.
Because you're bringing communities that were otherwise forced to get very long strings that are often not easy to remember, often not easy to relay. Those strings are now no longer as important because you can get memorable, descriptive strings available directly in the domain space.
I think that's true innovation that is being fostered. So that's the one thing that I'd like to make a point on.
The second is on we've talked here about diversity and inclusion. The thing here is that if you do not get to linguistic diversity combined with the other kinds of diversity that ICANN is looking for, you're going to fail. There has to be linguistic diversity as a core outreach goal, as a core model for a definition of success.
It's not the only determinant of success, but it ought to be a significant factor and a significant metric that you measure. Because the world that we know is not a world of English and Spanish and Chinese and Arabic, right?
The world that we know is far more multilingual, but we do not have systems at the domain name space or the domain name level that can reflect the actual reality of the people of the world. And for that, we need to really have a focus on linguistic diversity.
I'm pleased that there is a session tomorrow on universal acceptance and internationalized domain names. It's not enough to just say, let us get names in your language, let us get names accessible online. You have to also look at are the various languages and the communities that have those languages, do they have the knowledge, understanding, awareness to be able to participate in what you're bringing forward.
Because when they do that, you will find lower case innovation coming through.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Nice new way to look at this. Jen, dot Asia and the language and issues around that, how do you respond to the issue of lower case innovation based on language and inclusion?
Thank you. Where.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Thanks, Adam. I thought we weren't supposed to talk about it, but I'm happy as ever to say more. I think especially coming from Asia Pacific, language is ultimately so important.
Almost none of us in Asia Pacific has English as our first language. It's some of us its our second language, third language, or even fourth language. It's really important for the community that we're trying to serve to actually serve their needs, for them to be able to not only know they can navigate the Internet in their own language, that they have the know how to do so. And I'm really happy to hear both from Becky and also Kristy at the improvements that have been made towards the applicant support program.
Because obviously .KIDS was the beneficiary. The single beneficiary of the 2012 round applicant support program.
But I mean, we're happy in that way, but looking at it overall, that is a sign that there's a lot more things that need to be improved coming to the new round. Where can we really target and provide this benefit.
International domain names one is of the priorities that ICANN has said time and time again that they're looking for the new round. Even this morning we heard from Curtis that this is what ICANN really wants to happen to be able to serve the underserved or underrepresented regions, to be able to get these people online, being able to use these new domain names in a way not only to benefit the community, but in a way that allows for innovation, allows for market driven innovation and entrepreneurship.
The lower case A that not A, lower case I see, English is not my first language either that Ram was saying, is so critical, it's so critical. I think especially for Asia Pacific, because the linguistic diversity is so broad, it is more than just that. It is we're talking now about digital inclusion and language justice. I think that's something that Ram touched on is really near and dear to dot Asia's heart, of course .KIDS as well.
What we're trying to look, our wishes, if we had three wishes for what we want to see for the next round is of course more applicants coming in from Asia Pacific region. We're a huge region with most of the world population and growing.
And more from community applicants. I heard both from Becky and Kristy that the improvements done for these different evaluation processes, including fee reductions, that's very important, but in addition to that, to provide the knowledge and the upskilling that allows them to succeed and sustain, sustain sustain their business, that's the most important part.
More from community, that the community priority evaluation should lean towards supporting those who want to be community and not just kind of looking at it from the lens of, oh, we must weed out these people or these organizations that are trying to game the system.
Of course, every single system will have people who are looking to look for the loopholes. But the outset of how we're trying to organize and design these programs really should be for people who want to use this for the benefit of that community.
So hopefully that answers a little bit more. And the final little bit on internationalized domain names, by last wish, perhaps, that it's now on the equal footing to you will at different ASCII domain names that you see. But that could be something that's not weird, but something that's common and nobody blinks an eye at it.
>> ADAM PEAKE: We switched it off.
I put a link into the chat about the workshop tomorrow and the words beginning for that session are that the Internet the Internet must be multilingual and inclusive is the first sentence of the description there.
So we have about ooh, 24 minutes left 20 minutes left, something like that. 20 minutes left. Are there any questions from the audience? You're here, being very attentive and patient at the beginning. So would anybody like to raise a hand and we'll pass the mic around. Or the same for any question online. If not, I would like to go back to I see could you pass the microphone backwards, please.
Would like go back to Lucky and his comment about solutions. I don't think we should miss that.
Sir.
>> Thank you very much. I just wanted maybe to raise the issue one of the issues that which is census of the new TLDs that were put up in the last round. Especially these from Africa, Africa, dot Johannesburg, dot Capetown. They haven't been as successful as expected. And I think this applies to quite a few new gTLDs.
I don't know if the next round there's an evaluation on this and how ICANN wants to move forward with the success of new gTLD address.
>> Thank you. I hope you can hear me. I want to say we should expect not all gTLDs will succeed. We should walk away from this idea that just because ICANN introduces a new program and you have hundreds of thousands of gTLDs that come through that they should all be successful. I think at least from ICANN's point of view, the goal has to be creating a level playing field and making sure that the ingredients for success are present and accessible to all.
Those ingredients include the applicant support, they include the technical knowledge, they include linguistic ability, they include universal acceptance, things like that.
The rest of it, where there are market forces that come to bear, I really think we should allow economics and market forces to do what they do well rather than, you know, try to engineer some kind of social experiment to arrive at, you know, some definition of success.
>> SAGID: This means that all the different voices gets heard and built into the platforms that we have. So this multilingualism is an issue and that's why you see domain names and many initiatives including a programme that's been taken. But it needs to make sense for someone to continue a domain name. A program can only continue up to a certain extent. It cannot be (away from mic).
>> LUCKY MASILELA: If may comment, I think I'm quite excited by Ram's approach to complex issues. He explains them with a lower and upper cases. And of course, it makes sense the more he puts context into that.
And starting with the second point where he talks to diversity inclusion and in particular the linguistic diversity, for us, one of the things that we picked up in early days is that this is very critical, the issue of linguistic diversity.
And this was supported by the fact that there is less than 15% of African content, I'm talking our history books, our music, et cetera, that is available on Internet.
And it makes it difficult for the African child go into Internet and find sufficient information of themselves, something that's been created and generated by themselves across the multiple languages on the continent.
That, again, for us becomes an inhibitor to this digital inclusion. And we need to start bridging that gap to this digital inclusion by ensuring that more African languages are translated into or more Internet content is translated into African languages so that this can be accessible to the larger community.
And with that, we will see more people participating and we'll see more appreciation for what we are discussing today. The DNS domain name and the inclusiveness.
And then those lower cases in innovation, it is well and good, again, you know, there are certain things that are price sensitive. Once we say successful for domain name is not the number of names that you have sold. It proves slightly different, you know, when you don't have the numbers to begin to innovate around.
We have been able to innovate as an entity around names like you see, we've been able to build other solutions because we have scale. We don't need to bridge the scale that would be taking away from our creativeness or what you would call the upper case innovation.
It tells us that numbers do matter, especially for certain markets. You need to be price sensitive on the African continent. You cannot charge any fee that is very far from the market conditions. That will make it even more difficult for people to participate.
So we need to be equipped with all those things. How sensitive can we be to the pricing, make sure that's correct. And once the numbers there are and the scale is there, then we begin to bring in innovation. We bring more solutions into this thing so that this domain name is not just what it is, blank and boring. But we put color, we put flare into these things.
This reminds me of a different solution that was innovated on the continent. I don't know most of you might not or could have heard of it. Banks for a very long time have been excluding a lot of the cities across the continent.
And one mobile operator realized that we have a lot of people who are not banked. And we can use our platform, our mobile platform, to make sure that people have access to cash, access to money. Or they can use this tool, this mobile phone to make payments and transact, buy tomatoes, pay for it at the piggy piggy or in town.
And that was an innovation, when people felt marginalized by banking systems, that they couldn't qualify, they couldn't fulfill some of these AYC.
And then another instrument was developed which was more accommodating. And I'm seeing that for us, again, if we want to have this inclusiveness properly addressed, we have to think with an upper case innovation and come up with solutions that are going to bring more participants in the third world or those in the underdeveloped and underserved markets.
We have to think outside what we are starting. We are on the right track, but let's think again is this all that we can do? Is this sufficient? Does it provide a full proof solution for what we want to achieve inclusiveness?
History will judge us, that we have not done enough. We have failed to think far and fast to ensure that we include those that are marginalized.
Thank you.
>> ADAM PEAKE: We have over to Jen again and then I have Nick Webman Smith oh, go to Nick. Please.
>> NICK: Thank you, Adam. I think that works, I hope. Very strange with headphones, not headphones. My name's Nick, I'm employed by a company called Nominant. I wanted to share it a little bit of a story, because all over the United Kingdom is one of the G7, wealthy nations, we have areas of significant deprivation and social challenges. And I think that's the case in even in the very wealthiest of countries.
So we were very interested to get better digital presence for the Welsh community, which is a population of about 5 million and includes some of the very poorest parts of the United Kingdom.
And I have to tell you that when we approached the Welsh elected officials in terms of the cost of the new detail of the applications plus of course the technical time and infrastructure and expertise required, and to make it twice as bad, they wanted two, because they wanted one in the Welsh version, part of this is about linguistic diversity, so they had two application fees, plus two letters of credit for the continuing obligations thing which is also extremely expensive.
Now I want to be positive to say that actually it's been a very good initiative. And over the course of time they've now got a lot of very high profile registrations, for example, the national sport is rugby so they use a dot Wales domain name for the national sport and government, the news and government are well represented online. They have between the two 20,000 domains under registration, which is sustainable.
But I wanted to say that it has been first of all, it required an investor which was prepared to take a lot of risk and over the long time. That investor was Nominant. We paid the application fees and did all of the things that they had to to. It's taken 12 years of continuous investment over a long period of time before you see any sort of return.
I suppose what I'm just saying, while the applicant support program is being still refined within ICANN, you just need to understand that even for sophisticated applicants with relatively deep pockets, it was quite a hard piece of work and it required a lot longer.
The business models that we put together, which our finance team signed off on when we paid for the applications were well far off the mark is what I would say. And I think just just urge everybody to sort of try to do whatever you can do to help people with the applications. It will need ten times that what you're currently in order to get these things off the ground. It's a hugely complex process and a hugely expensive and technically time consuming one even for people who are expert in the area. So that's my thoughts on that.
It's not really a question, I'm just saying you need to do more.
>> ADAM PEAKE: I'll go to Jen who has been doing an awful lot already. Do more, Jen. Thank you.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Okay. Actually, I was really happy go after Nick, because I was going to bring back the example of .KIDS, which was this whole recipient of the applicant support program back in 2012.
I mean, we didn't launch until about two years ago. It's taken a very, very long time. And dot Asia is the organization behind all of this. We are supposedly on a cost recovery basis, but really we have underwritten everything, the know how on how to create the registry policies, leveraging on our registry back end providers, of course, do all of that.
And I foresee coming into the new round, I mean, talking again about success, right? Looking at if we're looking at pure numbers, that's just one measurement of success. I think success means different things to different people.
I like how Lucky has mentioned time and time again as well, and it's really important to stress the African continent really needs to look at this whether or not this new gTLD program for them coming in the new round, what success would look like for the African region.
And I bring it back to Asia Pacific, what success might look like for Asia Pacific. Is it more applications with international domain names? Is it more brands coming in? Is it more SMEs? Is it more innovative applications?
I think the answer is all of the above. I think right now as a community as well we're trying to refine the ways to be able to get to the success, not only of course ICANN the organization, but ICANN is also community who's trying to look at lessons learned from the previous round to apply them and create solutions that allow for innovation, but not to the point whereas a new applicant you want to individually, independently run your domain. Not always have the guardrails around or training wheels as I like to call them, forever.
Because that is not really a true sense of success. So being able to give that boost and help to the underserved regions, to the markets that really need this but don't know how, I think that is the balance we really have to strike here.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Ram, please.
>> RAM MOHAN: Briefly. Success for ICANN in this next round, perhaps, should include some estimation of the number of TLDs that will not succeed. That's the market reality.
And we really, I think, are doing all of us a disservice by going into this with an idea that 100% success rate or else. And I think that's unrealistic. That's not how the marketplace works.
We ought to have a recognition of that.
We also ought to recognise that in some cases, the need may be apparent, but the demand may not be evident. Right? Just because there is a need for something doesn't mean that the people who profess to have the need will be willing to go and stand up and open up their wallets and buy that name, right?
So I think some level of realism and some level of, you know, projecting and being quite clear that while the new TLD program will and should work on diversity, applicant support, especially linguistic diversity which is close to my heart as well, what all of those things are there, if you do all of those things, you should still expect some level of failure.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Final comment and then we'll probably have to wrap up, I think.
>> Thank you. Like wearing my investor hat, we always accept some failures. I see companies that have products that do very well until they start charging for it. There is always this reality and realities we continue to accept. But we continue to support.
I can listen to the voices, the whole idea is to listen to voices and do whatever we can to support.
>> ADAM PEAKE: Thank you very much, everybody, for your time this afternoon. We mentioned there's a workshop tomorrow afternoon around the issue of multilingualism, IDNs. Look for workshop 150. Want to thank online Lucky and Kristy, Lucky, for the challenges you're facing around the region and the whole of WSIS and not just the ICANN community. To Jen for being kind and helpful throughout and providing useful information particularly at the beginning while I was running around there. Thank you, incredibly kind.
And Sagid for the fault line scenarios and ideas.
Ram, I like lower case innovation and the importance of language. I think it's been helpful and grateful for all of you for being here and to our speakers. Thank you, the end. Bye.
>> KRISTY BUCKLEY: Thank you.