US Government Re-Issues Call For Bids To Manage Internet Root Zone

By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch

The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on Monday re-issued a request for proposals to manage the sensitive IANA contract. IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority function, includes the management of the central root zone of the internet domain name system, the allocation of internet protocol addresses to the Regional Internet Registries and other core parts of the internet infrastructure.

The re-issuing became necessary after the NTIA (which is part of the US Commerce Department) declared failure in its original call for tenders in March, just before a meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which has performed the function since 1998 and was said by many to be the sole bidder. NTIA’s announcement that it had “received no proposals that met the requirements requested by the global community” was seen as a slap in the face of ICANN. The nonprofit private organisation on 12 January opened a first window for applications for new top level domains (TLDs), an activity watched with some suspicion by many trademark owners as well as governments.

The re-issuing of the IANA contract request for proposals now comes at a rather unlucky moment for ICANN, which had to stop the TLD application procedure only some hours before the deadline last Thursday because of software problems and had to concede that parts of data from some applicants had been visible to other applicants. A new CEO at ICANN expected to come on board soon will have his hands full.

The re-issued contract is here.