Who said the autumn was a pacific time? Though the ICANN last meeting isn’t more than a memory, the hard activity of the last weeks shows market protagonists are still working without have to go traveling!

All honors for the .EU, this has been the weekly topic with, at least!, the sign of the concession contract between European Commission and EurID, Belgium, Italian and Swedish consortium. It was necessary less than 2 years so that the Commission took a decision about the whole criterion according to which the Register permits the inscription to the famous .EU. If this extension has a lot of time doing snake shape ( the submission of the “called interest expression” dated on October 25, 2002) you can ask today about the reception of the dominion name users are going to give it: which is the place for the European Extension if each time they are more accessible for all without country limits in relation with “the first that arrives, the first in attention” and the last study published by VeriSign shows that the biggest number of registration occurs in “country extensions” (ccTLDs)? Can you imagine if companies with a strong European presence wanted to protect themselves from cyber squatting and only “place” their extensions? How many of the six million names of German dominion (.DE) will be converted in .EU? The French case is also very interesting: while the AFNIC finally finishes with its change through the liberalization that involved a progress into .FR subscriptions and .COM is almost the king and doesn’t share with companies, but, what will happen with the .EU? The answer will be in some months, since the registering possibility of .EU won’t be open until the sign of the contract between the EurID and ICANN, and the “sunrise period”.

If the EU success is doubtful, the “head group” is always reserved for the three historic gTLDs , they are .Com, .org and net that celebrate their 20 years this month. The anniversary should be pointed for a publication about a “proposal letter of convocation” (RFP) in order to renew the .Net management from VeriSign hands . It only dedicates to the profitable .Com. It is good to remember that .Org was the procedure object of a similar one two years ago. It fell down into the Association Internet Services hands (ISOC) with the technical support of Afilias, the .Info Register. On the other hand, a certain hearsay pretends this last one is in the position of renewing the .Net, like NeuStar, its competitor operator from .Biz. The management of several extensions at the same time is, of course, an excellent way of economy: technically, the same material and the same methods are used for one or five extensions, and you will be able to amortize costs when the extensions number were bigger! Then, is the .Net a hidden story? This extension isn’t the only one used by the majority infrastructures in which the Internet is based (famous “root servants” between others), and the new operator will be judged according with extremely strict criterions. Without doubt, the candidates only have time until November 30 to send their proposals, the final results won’t be communicated until the end of June, after a long process of financial, technical and “policy” office made of an auditor. The election will be determinant for the market, too: generally .Net is the first alternative to .Com when the name you want has already been taken . If the next operator decides to contest with .Com , with a well known extension in the whole world like this in a frontal way, it is possible that the landscape of dominion number could be changed radically!

JCV & SB