The 50th International Public ICANN Meeting was held in London June 22-26, 2014. One of the key topics of the event was the discussion of the new top-level domains' implementation in course of the New gTLD program.

More than 300 new top-level domains have been delegated so far. The first round of the New gTLD program is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2017. It will additionally bring more than 1300 TLDs. More extensions will follow, since ICANN has already started planning the second round of the New gTLD program. However, it will only start once the experiences of the first round have been assessed, which is necessary to make changes or adjustments for the relevant procedures and avoid the issues faced during the first round.

Registry operators of new gTLDs regularly share their experiences by taking part in the acitivites of different ICANN stakeholder groups and committies .

Before the ICANN Meeting, Maxim Alzoba, Special Projects Manager of the Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development (FAITID), joined the officers of one of such groups — the New TLD Applicant Group (NTAG) — he has been elected to the position of its Vice Chair.

In addition to that, FAITID is participating in the GeoTLDs Group, since the organization is the registry for the .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА TLDs.

"When working in ICANN's New gTLD-related groups, we not only share our experiences with other registries," says Maxim Alzoba. "We also communicate closely with the ICANN management and regularly submit suggestions on optimization of the existing New gTLD procedures."

ICANN often takes into consideration the position of the New gTLD registry operators. One such example is the plan for the risk mitigation of the name collision issue, which was discussed in London. Owing to the public comment period, the duration of the controlled interruption period was reduced in the final plan from 120 to 90 days. The ICANN Board is soon expected to approve the updated plan.