Hello All,

Thank you for your feedback! it is terrific to see the different backgrounds of NCSG/NCUC
members :)

if I took some examples of prospective applicants, I observed that many of them aren't newcomer to ICANN community and many of them already or are managing registries.
for example for dotarab project, it is supported by some Arab ccTLDs (with endorsement of Arab league) , I guess that they don't have to invest a lot from the scratch and have already the technical knowledge and experience. they even tested IDN since a while and are ready (some of them applied for IDN ccTLD)
for dotparis project, it is back by Paris city with the technical support as back registry , Afnic (the manager of .fr) and Indom (an accredited registrar).
 
For the costs as defined by Tan Tin, I am wondering if the bandwidth is still a barrier: first not all developing countries have the same issues, secondly the bandwidth issue is getting obsolete in many areas (but still unfortunately present in other).

I think that all incurred cost are because the requirements from ICANN especially for security matter like the High security TLD, DNSSec or the almost 5millions dollars DNS-CERT. I attended the meeting about the latter and all ccTLD were opposed against it as ICANN ask for funding (a volunteer donation from African countries of 3% from their income)

I agree with Avri that as NCSG/NCUC we should propose a paper to ICANN (it will be terrific and the first unpaid economic study for ICANN :) ):
- to show that cost for running registry regarding appropriate requirement is really low and don't correspond to what Kurt is arguing as cost-recovery etc
- to recommend some funding channels for applicants from developing countries especially for those toward communities and having strong public interest

Rafik

2010/3/19 Milton L Mueller <[log in to unmask]>
> -----Original Message-----
> This is completely unrealistic and off by at least an order of
> magnitude if you want to run a real/serious registry. You really need
> to review the technical and operational requirements to be/run a TLD.
>
> A registry/TLD operator is not a hot dog stand.
>

Jorge: If you are talking about .com, .net, .de, .uk or .org yes. If you are talking about .cat, we are indeed talking about hot dog stand levels of capital investment.