ICANN announced yesterday that the registries for four country code top level domains have the successfully completed the IDN ccTLD Fast Track String Evaluation. The approved requests are from Egypt, the Russian Federation, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Presently, ICANN has received a total of 16 requests for an IDN ccTLD String Evaluation review that represent eight languages.
IDN ccTLD requesters must meet several of requirements:
- the script used to represent the IDN ccTLDs must be non-Latin;
- the languages used to express the IDN ccTLDs must be official in the corresponding country or territory; and
- a specific set of technical requirements must be met (as evaluated by an external DNS Stability Panel comprised of DNS and IDN experts).
Now that the first four ccTLD successfully passed through the String Evaluation, these IDN.IDN domains extensions will begin the application process for String Delegation that will provide them entry into the root zone.
The request, evaluation and approval process for IDN ccTLD entail three steps:
- Preparation Phase: (by the requester in the country / territory). Community consensus is built for which IDN ccTLD to apply for, how it is run, and which organization will be running it, along with preparing and gathering all the required supporting documentation.
- String Evaluation: incoming requests to ICANN in accordance with the criteria described above: the technical and linguistic requirements for the IDN ccTLD string(s).
- String Delegation: requests successfully meeting string evaluation criteria are eligible to apply for delegation following the same ICANN IANA process as is used for ASCII based ccTLDs. String delegation requests are submitted to IANA root zone management.
Safenames will provide information regarding the details of any pre-registration request period, sunrise launch or the general availability for IDN ccTLDs as details are made public by the approved registry operators.
If you have any questions regarding IDN ccTLDs, please contact your Safenames account representative.