Some bloggers here and here, have raised the alarm that Verisign may not Delegate new gTLD’s based on a letter Verisign send to the U.S. National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) back in March.
I reached out to Verisign to get an updated comment and position of Verisign on the issue and asked if Verisign would delegate 20 new gTLD strings per week as is ICANN’s current plan starting sometime late this year and certainly for 2014 under the new gTLD program.
A Verisign spokesperson told TheDomains.com
“In accordance with our agreed upon obligations under the Cooperative Agreement between NTIA and Verisign, including the preservation of security, stability and resiliency of the DNS, Verisign intends to comply with any instruction from NTIA to process change requests to delegate a new gTLD. ”
“Verisign expects that ICANN and NTIA will ensure those change requests are made in a manner that ensures the stability, security and resiliency of the DNS.”
I guess that takes Verisign unilaterally refusal to delegate new gTLD’s to the root off the table.
Verisign has informed NTIA that they believe the “certain issues have not been addressed and must be addressed before any root zone managers, including Verisign, are ready to implement the new gTLD Program.”
“We want to be clearly on record as reporting out this critical information to NTIA unequivocally as we believe a complete assessment of the critical issues remain unaddressed which left unremediated could jeopardize the security and stability of the DNS.”
“We strongly recommend that the previous advice related to this topic be implemented and the capability for root server system monitoring, instrumentation, and management capabilities be developed and operationalized prior to beginning delegations.”
However clearly by Verisign’s response if the NTIA tells Verisign to delegate new gTLD’s to the root Verisign will.
