The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is ceding its control of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to the global multistakeholder community.
The latest decision marks the beginning of a long-planned transition affecting the stewardship of the ICANN, which has been tasked with assigning website addresses and directing Internet traffic.
With the NTIA anticipated to end the supervision of ICANN’s Internet Assigned Numbers Authority by the time its contract comes to an end next September, proposals for a new ICANN stewardship would be accepted from the following week at a conference in Singapore.
Communications and Information Commerce Assistant Secretary Lawrence Strickling said that the timing is right to start the transition process.
"We look forward to ICANN convening stakeholders across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate transition plan," Strickling said.
NTIA has asked ICANN to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition the current role played by NTIA in the coordination of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS).
NTIA wants the succeeding controlling body should comprise of private companies and government representatives.
NTIA has told ICANN that the successor should have broad community support and address the principles including; support and enhance the multi stakeholder model; maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS; meet the needs and expectation of the global customers and partners of the IANA services; and, maintain the openness of the Internet.
The agency also expects that ICANN need to work collaboratively with the directly affected parties, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Society (ISOC), the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), top level domain name operators, VeriSign, and other interested global stakeholders.
Following which ICANN has started a process to transition the role of the US relating to the Internet’s unique identifiers system.
ICANN’s President and CEO Fadi Chehadé said the agency is inviting governments, the private sector, civil society, and other Internet organisations from the whole world to join in developing this transition process.
"All stakeholders deserve a voice in the management and governance of this global resource as equal partners,"Chehadé said.
Welcoming the decision, EU vice president Neelie Kroes said it will allow a more global multi-stakeholder basis for an important element of governance of the Internet.
"This is an historical step in making Internet governance truly global, and marks major progress towards the development of a multi-stakeholder model as advocated in the Commission’s recent Communication," Kroes said.
"Until now the United States has had the final say in changes to globally used data on top-level Internet domain names, such as .com or .de."
