ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has opened its 31st International public meeting in New Delhi. The meeting is expected to cover topics such as Internet Internationalisation and increased domain name choices. “This year is an important one for the future of ICANN. The U.S. government is in the middle of its Midterm Review of its Joint Project Agreement with ICANN, and we’re arguing it’s time to take the final step to originally envisioned private sector model for ICANN,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN’s Board Chairman. “In fact the public comment period closes on the final day of this meeting – so we expect plenty of discussion about this in New Delhi, and we will be encouraging everyone who believes in the ICANN model of coordination not control to make their thoughts known.”

This meeting is the first of three public ICANN meetings planned in 2008. ICANN’s policies are created through a bottom up, transparent process involving the Internet Community so this meeting is crucial.

“There will be key discussions at the New Delhi meting about our ongoing work to develop a new application and approval model for new generic top-level domains or gTLDs, and our work on Internationalized domains or IDNs, which will mean the languages and scripts of most of the world could be used to write domain names,” said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN’s President and CEO. “Because the ICANN model is based on bottom-up, consensus-driven policy making, these global meetings are important ways of making sure ICANN is on track and meeting the needs of the wider Internet community.”

The discussions around IDNs (internationalised domain names) will involve two workshops. The first of these workshops on the Fast-Track Process to represent territory identifications in local languages as country-code top level domains. This needs to be done as quickly as possible and the second on the work India is conducting on IDNs in Indian language and scripts.

Other highlights of the meeting include: A workshop on ICANN’s planning for what will happen if a Registrar were to cease to operate. An IT success of India session with some of the leading figures in the Indian IT industry. An open and public ICANN board meeting.