FYI. Where can find more about this ICANN trial? -- Bret --------- ICANN to launch trial testing of IDNs forTop Level Domains in the third quarter of 2006 Shanghai. March 14. INTERFAX-CHINA - English language will lose its monopoly on Internet domain names before the end of the year. ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will start the trial testing of internationalized domain names (IDN) in the Top Level Domain (TLD) system, in the third quarter of 2006, Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN, told Interfax in an interview Tuesday. Once IDN domain names are implemented Internet sites will able to have domain names in foreign languages, and foreign character sets- such as Chinese. "The preparation for the testing is already underway, and it will be a testing on the top of the root," said Twomey. "We are presently moving to introduce the IDNs of TLD, and are much closer to the end for the answer." But the exact date for the launch of the IDN is not yet available. In order to implement the internationalized domain name system, ICANN has launched two working groups including the Presidents Advisory Committee with technical experts, and a policy group to draft explicit policies on the application and operation of IDNs. Twomey said that ICANN was expecting the policy development process to come to a conclusion in the end of the third quarter or the early fourth quarter this year. "I understand people's complaints towards ICANN's slow process on this issue," said Twomey. "ICANN should ensure the stability, usability of the Internet, and therefore, the launch of IDN involves different layers and protocols, and is not as simple as it sounds." The three biggest concerns for ICANN to implement IDNs in TLD include technical stability, the linguistic issue of language characters, and the policy of later operation. "The launch of IDNs is a big issue for ICANN, and important to Internet users worldwide, especially those do not speak English," said Twomey. However, Twomey emphasized that the real thing that drives Internet and usability should be the local Internet content instead of the domain name system. Commenting on the recent change that China has made towards its domain name system, Twomey said the change that China has made is mainly to build up their second-level domain name structure as other countries do. "We do not see they are transferring their own domain name systems onto their single root services." The full text of the interview, where Twomey talks about the Chinese Internet market, future development of the Internet worldwide, ICANN's linguistic policy, allocation policies, international strategy, censorship and other matters, will be available exclusively in the Interfax China IT Report Weekly. -FW http://www.interfax.cn/showfeature.asp?aid=10963&slug=INTERNET-ICANN-PAUL-TW OMEY-DOMAIN-NAME