Guangzhou Yuwei Technology Co. Ltd (“The Applicant”) was incorporated in China on February 27th of 2012 with a registered capital of RMB 50 million. It is officially appointed and endorsed by the Guangdong provincial government with mission and purpose of applying for the relevant geographic gTLDs upon the launch of the ICANN new gTLD program and subsequently operating and managing these geographic gTLDs.
The vision for the Applicant is to become of the first few stakeholders in the China Internet space, and also the global Internet space to manage and operate geographic TLD and through the TLD, serve the general Chinese public’s interests and promote the culture and brand of the Guangdong region via the Internet.
Guangdong province is the most populous province in China, registering about 104 million residents. Its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011 reached about RMB 5300 billion (USD 841 billion), an increase of 10% from last year. This is the highest among all provinces of China. The province contributes approximately 12% of China’s national economic output and is home to the production facilities and offices of a wide-ranging set of multinational and Chinese corporations.
The Applicant has chosen Zodiac Holdings Limited (“Zodiac”) as its partner to run the business operations of the registry. Zodiac Holdings Limited (“Zodiac”) was founded and incorporated in Cayman Islands by James Seng in 2008 in anticipation of the launch of the ICANN new gTLD program. Currently, it is headquartered in Hong Kong and has an operation center in Beijing, China. The team consists of experienced veterans in the global and China domain name industry like James Seng and former China Network Information Center (CNNIC) employees such as Eugene Li.
James Seng is one of the Internet pioneers in Singapore and is widely recognized as an international expert in numerous Internet areas. He is well known as the inventor of IDN and has co-chaired the IDN Working Group in IETF from 1999 to 2004, leading to the standardization of IDN.
Eugene Li, is the former Vice President of China Network Information Center (CNNIC). During his 7 years tenure at CNNIC, Eugene has launched initiatives that doubled domain name registrations and helped CNNIC become the no. 1 ccTLD and no. 2 TLD by volume. At the time when Eugene left to join Zodiac, CNNIC has over 13 million domain name registrations.
With respect to the technical operations of the registry, the Applicant has chosen to partner with CNNIC (“Back-End Service Provider”). CNNIC is a trusted third party provider of registry of domain name services which has operated “.CN” ccTLD for over 15 years. In addition, CNNIC is also a trusted partner for IDN services as it has successfully operated ʺ中国ʺ Chinese IDN ccTLD since 2010 and developed standards of Chinese IDN like RFC 3743, RFC 4713, which have been recognized by the industry.
Together, the Applicant can realize its vision and bring to the market, Chinese IDN domain name services via CNNIC’s technological innovation, proven channel management expertise and delivery of the world’s most advanced domain name registry services.
For this application, the Applicant is applying for the IDN gTLD “.广东”, pronounced as “guangdong”. To make it easier for non-Chinese reader, “广东” will be referred to as “STRING” in the remaining part of this application.
The Applicant’s vision for “.STRING” is to be a flag bearer of IDN geographic city gTLDs in China’s Internet space. Because of the special conditions governing geographical TLDs application under ICANN, and China (province and country level approval required), the introduction of “.STRING” will be heavily supported and valued by the China government.
Because of Guangdong’s name, “.STRING” becomes a term that easily sticks in the minds of the Chinese Internet user. To the citizens of the Guangdong province, “.STRING” becomes a string that they can associate and associate with. To the many private enterprises in the region, “.STRING” helps to create a name space that the enterprises and their customers can collaborate in. To the multinationals with branch offices situated across the various cities in the region, “.STRING” also helps to provide a geographical identity.
One of “.STRING” objectives is to make it easier for the Chinese Internet population to access and use the Internet. Today, as fewer and fewer premium domain names are available, companies and individuals have to come up with longer and less intuitive domain names in “.com” or other related TLDs. To the Chinese, where English is a second language, remembering long domain names is very tedious.
Furthermore, there are many methods to type Chinese characters today. An IDN gTLD will make it easier for the Chinese Internet population to not have to switch input methods when typing the full domain name.
On a global scale, the introduction of “.STRING” geographic gTLD allows any Chinese Internet user (not just limited to China) to have an online identity that he can bear with pride. It also helps to promote Chinese culture to the rest of the non-Chinese Internet population.
In the latest data released by CNNIC, at the end of 2011, there are about 1.4 million domain names attributed to the Guangdong region. This is the initial target audience for the “.STRING” where the emergence of the IDN domain names will become a mainstream way for the Chinese users to input and use. Guangdong government also released data that there were about 1 million small and medium enterprises and about 3.38 million sole proprietors as of the end of 2011. These businesses are the potential extended market audience for “.STRING” when it is introduced.
The Applicant expects “.STRING” to initially reach about 20,047 in the 1st year, and grow to 28,639 and 40,094 by the 2nd and 3rd year respectively.
The projection is based on a conservative estimate taking the following into consideration:
* total number of domain names registered in China across all TLDs
* proportion of total number of domain names registered in China that are in Chinese
* ICANN benchmarking of registry operations, Feb. 2010
* price point for “.STRING” and how the China market would react based on the team’s experience in China
* initial growth of existing gTLDs in China
The pricing for “.STRING” is intentionally set at a price relative to the IDN ccTLD of China (.中国) because the Applicant believes that “.STRING” has intrinsic value by virtue of its geographical significance compared to other gTLDs.
The Applicant will have Sunrise process prior to opening the general registration to ensure that the relevant rights owners have their first rights to their names. Landrush period will also be introduced to cater for the ardent aspirant registrants. The Applicant will also adopt the Trademark Clearing House to reduce cybersquatting and other intellectual property rights infringements. Furthermore, the Applicant will have additional protection for geographic names. Details are described in the answers to Question 22, 28 and 29.
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