By Steven Lang, Highway Africa News Agency


Luxembourg- ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has approved an annual budget that includes provision for a strategic plan covering the years from 2006 to 2009. Delegates have been invited to contribute towards this far-reaching plan despite uncertainties looming just over the horizon.

ICANN's board of directors approved the 2005 – 2006 budget at the 23rd international public meeting held in Luxembourg. More than 900 delegates from 55 countries attended the gathering which is part of ICANN's program to enhance transparency through public meetings in diverse cities of the world.

Paul Twomey, chief executive officer of ICANN, hailed the successes of the meeting which included a series of productive workshops, important strides in the fight against domain name high-jacking and a contract to create the .mobi domain for the mobile community. Yet, in spite of these undoubted triumphs, there was an air of uncertainty at the meetings.

There are two sources of this uncertainty: the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, and the recent decision in Washington to retain control of the root folder.

WSIS is a two phased process aimed at structuring the information society and bridging the digital divide between the wealthier, industrialised countries and the developing nations. The first phase of the summit took place in Geneva in December 2003 and the second phase will culminate in Tunis in November 2005.

Widespread dissatisfaction over ICANN's prominent role, and confrontations over who should govern the internet resulted in a lack of consensus at the Geneva phase. In an attempt to resolve this impasse, after the summit, the UN Secretary General convened the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) to make recommendations on what should be done about internet governance.

ICANN critics, and especially those who are unhappy about the close relationship between the organisation and the US government, are expected to use the WGIG report to try to transfer ICANN responsibilities to a UN agency.

Vint Cerf, ICANN chairman, says the board will certainly formulate a response to the WGIG proposals offering four models on how the internet could be run in the future. He said he was favourably impressed with the overall tone of the WGIG report, however "….all four models are very high level and the devil is in the details".

The second source of uncertainty was born out of a Bush administration declaration expressing its intention to retain control of the root folder – essentially the key to the internet.

While the declaration went out of its way to re-affirm its confidence in ICANN, the fact that Washington reneged on its earlier promise to relinquish control of the root servers, must sow some seeds of doubt. If the US government can break its word once, how sure can ICANN be that it will honour its promise to step back from its over-sight role in September 2006?

Washington's unilateral decision to retain control over the root servers strengthened perceptions that the US government is still firmly in control of the internet and has no intention of changing the status quo.

One of the most visible achievements at the Luxembourg meeting was the completion of a contract between ICANN and a consortium of interested parties for the creation of the .mobi domain. This means that the mobile community will be able to buy addresses that end with .mobi.

The consortium, known as mTLD Top Level Domain, Ltd has an interesting mix of shareholders including: Microsoft, GSM Association, Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia and Vodafone. An ICANN press release says the consortium was formed with the specific purpose of "…creating a registry service to the .mobi domain. This will serve as a reliable and recognisable mechanism for internet content and services that are specifically tailored to a mobile experience".

The ICANN board also decided that its next international public meeting in Vancouver , Canada would be designated as the "Annual Meeting of ICANN".

By Rebecca Wanjiku, Highway Africa News Agency

15 July, 2005

Luxembourg- The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) should budget for outreach and training activities in Africa in order to bridge the digital and information divide, said Mouhammet Diop, Africa's representative on the ICANN board.

He said the board has a responsibility to honour promises made at the meeting in Cape Town last December. At that meeting, the board committed itself to help Africa accelerate its participation in the global internet agenda.

"I believe ICANN should budget for outreach and capacity building activities in Africa. This is not unfair to ask, promises were made in the presence of African delegates in Cape Town, that should be honored," says Diop.

Diop was speaking to the board at the final session of ICANN's meeting in Luxembourg.

Vinton Cerf, ICANN board chairman admits promises were made but hastened to add that the internet body had already drawn up a budget that was awaiting approval by the board. If this budget is approved, Cerf says, ICANN can embark on outreach and training activities in Africa.

"ICANN has always supported Africa in its endeavors; a good example is the creation of AfriNIC- the African Regional Registry. But our responsibility is only limited to the activities we can handle, some of them we cannot handle," adds Cerf.

Diop says ICANN should set up a regime where all stakeholders can benefit. If the number of users in Africa is increased, Diop argues, internet registrars would get more business through the registration of more domain names.

"Only two percent of Africans can access computers, of those with access, how many know the benefits or how to engage in e-commerce? People should have this knowledge and ICANN can ably promote the integrity of internet business," argues Diop.

In this respect, if ICANN improves awareness of the use of e-commerce in Africa, it will translate into an improved market base for internet security companies that issue certificates for e-commerce and also internet registries that register domain names.

To buttress his case, Diop drew parallels with a recent ICANN decision to give financial support to the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) even though the working group was convened by the UN Secretary General.

According to Diop, the ICANN board should approve funds for Africa since the move will in the long term be mutually beneficial for other stakeholders within the organisation.

By Steven Lang, Highway Africa News Agency
15 July, 2005

Luxembourg- A report released into the preparatory process for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) recommends that a new forum be established to allow for more debate on how the internet should be governed.
The Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) was set up after the first phase of the WSIS meeting in Geneva in 2003 failed to produce consensus on the concept of internet governance. The UN Secretary General tasked WGIG with drawing up a report tackling some of the more contentious aspects of this subject.
One of the more interesting recommendations of the WGIG report, due for release on Monday, calls for "the creation of a new space for dialogue for all stakeholders on an equal footing on all internet governance-related issues".
This space, or forum, could be yet another hollow talk-shop where unresolved issues are left to be eternally dissected until they are forgotten, or it could be a useful think-tank that produces meaningful solutions.
WGIG recommends the forum because it "…identified a vacuum within the context of existing structures, since there is no global multi-stakeholder forum to address internet-related public policy issues".
It says the forum "…should preferably be linked to the United Nations, in a form to be defined". By not defining the details of the forum, and by subtly nudging the proposed body towards the UN sphere of influence, the WGIG report ensures that the public policy debate is kept away from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It would further strengthen the momentum to create a full blooded internet body within the UN framework.
The report also proposes that the forum have a secretariat of two or three people – but it says nothing at all about who should finance the forum.
WGIG says that such a forum would be of particular benefit to developing countries because there is no other place for discussing internet-related public policy issues.

Paragraph 44 of the WGIG report reads:

"The forum. It would be better placed than existing Internet institutions to engage developing countries in a policy dialogue. This would be an important factor in itself, as the future growth of the Internet is expected to be mainly in developing countries".
The WGIG report will be at the centre of deliberations of the third WSIS preparatory committee (PrepCom 3) meeting in Geneva at the end of September. PrepCom is supposed to prepare the final resolutions and documentation for the second phase of the summit due to take place in Tunis in November.