Uniregistry, Corp. (“Uniregistry”), an applicant for 52 top-level domains has gone against many other new gTLD applicants in asking ICANN to slow down the new gTLD Last Resort Auction Schedule.
In its comments to ICANN on the new gTLD Last Resort ICANN auction rules Uniregistry says it “is disappointed that ICANN changed the “5-TLD-per-month” cap from its initial proposal.”
“On the current draft schedule, Uniregistry has three months in which it will have seven TLD applications go to auction.
The change from 5 TLDs per month to 7 TLDs per month materially changes the capital an applicant much park with ICANN for maximum bids from $10,000,000/month to $14,000,0000/month.
This has a material, negative impact on virtually all start-up registry applicants. For this reason, Uniregistry proposes that ICANN either revert to the “5-TLD-per-month” cap or scale the maximum bid deposit downward to cap an applicant’s single-month deposit obligation to $10,000,000.”
ICANN is currently considering doing 20 new gTLD last resort auctions per month starting in March.
