DotCities Association Formed And Meets At ICANN Dakar
Posted in: Domain Names at 27/10/2011 22:32
Potential applicants for city Top Level Domains (TLDs) have joined together to form a dotCities Association, with the first meeting being held at the current ICANN meeting being held in Dakar, Senegal.The dotCities Association will bring together representatives of the 20 cities with proposals to apply for a cityTLD. During the meeting in Dakar the association heard an update on .BERLIN, .WIEN, .HAMBURG, .LEIPZIG, .PARIS, .BCN (Barcelona) and .MOSCOW/.МОСКВА.
Currently the local government authorities in Hamburg, Berlin and Vienna plan to call for Requests for Proposal (RFP) to operate a registry for the city TLDs.
With the support of the local city authority imperative, the group behind the .BCN proposal told the meeting they had already gained the support from the local government authority, but there was a recent election so now they have to start again in gaining the support of the local authority.
The .PARIS project however is coordinated directly by the authorities of the city and has been planned since the ICANN Meeting in Paris in mid-2008 when a large-scale work on the TLD process was announced.
There was also a presentation on the proposal for the .MOSCOW/.МОСКВА gTLDs by the Foundation for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development (FAITID). This initiative is officially supported by Moscow Government and the application for these TLDs are currently being prepared, with plans for the TLDs to be introduced at the beginning of 2013.
