[AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN Establishes Forum on Allocation Methods for Single-letter and Single-digit Domain Names

[Khaled KOUBAA]

We should be convinced that the single-digit domain name will be as a 
business as the registries business. In fact who will buy x.com, an 
entity interested in selling sub-domain under the X.com ( may pron 
oriented site ). Who will be interested in o.com, e.com , same thing.
So giving possibility to someone to sell subdomain under a one digit 
domain name is like ccTLD who are selling .com.uk for example. We will 
have www.mysite.e.net or www.company.c.com and others.
I think that the best is to use the same method to allocate a new gTLD 
or sTLD licence by giving a license to ONLY one entity that will sell to 
registrat and to registrar what they want of sub-domain under what ever 
single-digit and PAY contribution to ICANN for each sub-domain. Maybe 
this contribution should be less than the one payed for a domain name.


Anne-Rachel Inné wrote:
>
> ICANN Establishes Forum on Allocation Methods for Single-letter and 
> Single-digit Domain Names
>
> 16 October 2007
>
> As recommended by the GNSO Council, ICANN is commencing a forum on 
> potential allocation methods for single-letter and single-digit domain 
> names at the second level in gTLD registries. Examples include a.com 
> <http://a.com>, i.info <http://i.info>, 4.mobi, 8.org <http://8.org>. 
> Since revenue will result from this allocation, comments regarding the 
> potential uses for this revenue are also requested.
>
> ICANN intends to synthesize responses to the forum and present 
> proposed methods for allocation of single-letter and single-digit 
> domain names at the second level for community consideration.
>
> To be considered by ICANN, ideas on potential allocation methods 
> should be submitted no later than 23:59 UTC, 15 November 2007 to 
> allocationmethods at icann.org <mailto:allocationmethods at icann.org>. 
> Comments may be viewed at 
> http://forum.icann.org/lists/allocationmethods/.
>
> The GNSO Council asked ICANN to initiate a forum on this issue after 
> considering a report of the Council's Reserved Names Working Group 
> (RN-WG), which recommended that "single letters and digits be released 
> at the second level in future gTLDs, and that those currently reserved 
> in existing gTLDs should be released. This release should be 
> contingent upon the use of appropriate allocation frameworks. More 
> work may be needed. In future gTLDs we recommend that single letters 
> and single digits be available at the second (and third level if 
> applicable)." The GNSO is one of ICANN's primary stakeholder-populated 
> policy making bodies. The recommendations of the RN-WG can be found at 
> http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/final-report-rn-wg-23may07.pdf 
> [PDF, 713K].
>
> *Background*
>
> Currently, all 16 gTLD registry agreements (.AERO, .ASIA, .BIZ, .CAT, 
> .COM, .COOP, .INFO, .JOBS, .MOBI, .MUSEUM, .NAME, .NET, .ORG, .PRO, 
> .TEL, and .TRAVEL) provide for the reservation of single-letter and 
> single-digit names at the second level. ICANN's gTLD registry 
> agreements contain the following provision on single-letter and 
> single-digit names. See Appendix 6 of the .TEL Registry Agreement, 
> http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/tel/appendix-6-07apr06.htm ("the 
> following names shall be reserved at the second-level: All 
> single-character labels.").
>
> Letters, numbers and the hyphen symbol are allowed within second level 
> names in both top level and country code TLDs. Single letters and 
> numbers also are allowed as IDNs -- as single-character Unicode 
> renderings of ASCII compatible (ACE) forms of IDNA valid strings.
>
> Before the current reserved name policy was imposed in 1993, Jon 
> Postel (under the IANA function) took steps to reserve all available 
> single character letters and numbers at the second level for future 
> extensibility of the Internet (see 20 May 1994 email from Jon Postel, 
> http://ops.ietf.org/lists/namedroppers/namedroppers.199x/msg01156.html). 
> All but six (q.com <http://q.com>, x.com <http://x.com>, z.com 
> <http://z.com>, i.net <http://i.net>, q.net <http://q.net>, and x.org 
> <http://x.org> ) of the possible 144 single letters or numbers at the 
> second-level in .COM, .EDU, .NET and .ORG remain reserved by IANA. 
> Those six registrations are an exception to the reservation practice. 
> Under current practice, these names would be placed on reserve if the 
> registrations were allowed to expire.
>
> The RN-WG carefully considered technical implications of releasing 
> single-letter and single-digit domain names from reservation, and 
> engaged in discussions with technical experts as the working group 
> recommendations were being developed.
>
> There are currently 265 TLDs in the root zone (19 gTLDs and 246 
> ccTLDs). Although nearly all single-letter and single-digit domain 
> names are reserved in gTLDs, 24% of ccTLDs (60) have at least one 
> single-character name registration. According to IANA, out of 9540 
> possible combinations of single-character ASCII names (containing 26 
> letters, 10 numbers, but not symbols, across 265 TLDs), 1225 
> delegations of single-character ASCII names exist in the TLD zones 
> (See http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-rn-wg/msg00039.html).
>
> ICANN has received many inquiries from third parties seeking to 
> register single-letter and single-digit domain names, and has advised 
> these parties that the names are reserved. Through the establishment 
> of the public forum described above, ICANN is following its bottom-up, 
> multi-stakeholder model to develop suitable allocation mechanisms for 
> the release of single-letter and single-digit domain names as 
> recommended by the GNSO working group.
>
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>
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