For information Information from ICANN staff on the implementation of the revised Add Grace Period (AGP) policy. The revision was designed to prevent abuse of the AGP by "taste testers". The original AGP was designed to allow for the correction of bona fide user errors. ------------------------------------------------- - An advisory on the implementation of the AGP Limits Policy was made to the community on 17 December 2008, and called for roll-out of the Policy as soon as possible and no later than 31 March 2009 for an effective date of 1 April 2009. - 15 of the 16 gTLD registries are required to implement the Policy since they offer an AGP to their registrars. - 12 of the 15 gTLD registries reported in February 2009 that they will implement the Policy effective 1 April 2009. - 3 of the 15 gTLD registries (.MOBI, .ASIA and .AERO) requested a one-month extension and have provided notice that they will implement the Policy effective 1 May 2009. - The new reporting requirements of the Policy are due to be reflected for the 12 gTLD registries in the reports they are required to submit by 20 May 2009 for the April reporting period. Monthly registry reports for April 2009 will be publicly available on ICANN's website on or after 1 August 2009 in observance of the three-month confidentiality period for registry reports. The new reporting requirements are: - Number of exemption requests - Number of exemptions granted - Number of names affected by granted exemption request - Number of AGP deletes (domains-deleted-grace) if this information is not currently defined in the Operator's monthly reporting requirement AGP deletes information: - On 13 November 2008, an announcement on the ICANN website reported that AGP deletes had decreased by 84% (17.6 million to 2.8 million) from the period June 2008 to July 2008 following implementation of the ICANN Board approved AGP Budget Provision. This provision called for an assessment of the registrar-level transaction fee, US$0.20 at that time, for all AGP deletes that exceed the threshold defined in provision. The threshold of this provision, and that of the AGP Limits Policy, is 10% of the net adds for the month or 50 whichever is greater. - The AGP Budget Provision is due to expire on 30 June 2009 at the conclusion of ICANN's fiscal year. - For the period July 2008 through January 2009, the average monthly AGP deletes figure is 2.8 million. _______________________ Craig Schwartz Chief gTLD Registry Liaison ICANN