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Questions to and Answers from Applicant for .biz



ICANN Questions:

ICANN is in the process of reviewing JVTeam's TLD Application. As outlined in the October 23, 2000 TLD Application Review Update which appears at http://www.icann.org/tlds/tld-review-update-23oct00.htm, ICANN may "gather the additional information [it] require[s] by posing specific questions to applicants in e-mail and requesting a written response."

Keeping in mind the goal to evaluate applications to operate or sponsor new TLDs in as open and transparent a manner as possible, both the questions posed by ICANN and the Applicant's responses will be publicly disclosed on the ICANN website.

Accordingly, ICANN requests your reponses to the following questions:

1. Identify and describe in detail when you expect to have positive income.

2. Identify and describe in detail the portion of "Other Direct Expenses" which are related to marketing costs?

3. Identify and summarize Applicant's assumptions with respect to the existence of other general purpose TLDs in determining the total number of registrations in your application.

4. Identify and describe in detail the timetable in which you will allow full access to ICANN accredited registrars.

5. If you intend to provide bulk Whois service, identify and provide a summary of the party or parties who will provide that service.

6. Identify and describe in detail the your average and worst case transaction times for a post to confirmation of acceptance.

7. Identify and describe in detail the service level to which you are willing to contractually commit for post to confirmation of acceptance.

8. Identify and describe in detail your projected level of Whois query traffic.

9. Identify and describe in detail the projected query traffic level to the Whois function to which you are willing to contractually commit.

10. Assuming you receive a new TLD, identify and describe in detail the timetable for the availability of the following services:

a. registrar test-bed;
b. sunrise period;
c. full operation; and
d. full access by accredited registrars.

11. Identify the service availability timetable to which you are willing to contractually commit for the following:

a. registrar test-bed;
b. sunrise period;
c. full operation; and
d. full access by accredited registrars.

12. Assuming your primary site experiences a catastrophic failure, identify and describe in detail the timetable required to restore:

a. partial SRS service; and
b. full SRS service.

13. Identify whether you will provide a test-bed for registrars to validate their protocol software.

JVTeam Responses:

1. In Registry Operator's Proposal Section II.3 (RFP Section D13.3), JVTeam presents both the requisite single TLD view of .biz as well as "an illustrative view of .biz at the 50% demand interval aggregated with additional gTLD volumes." This latter view reflects JVTeam's mission to be a neutral registry operator in the gTLD space, and enables JVTeam to provide the competitive pricing structure, including discounts for high volumes over a time horizon. In this scenario, JVTeam becomes net income positive in the first quarter of the third year of registry operations.

2. The marketing expenses enumerated in the .biz proposal captured only the media expenses, i.e., print ads, radio spots, etc, outlined in the marketing plan. In the table below, we identify the portions of other direct expenses that are attributable to marketing that include PR efforts, staff salaries and travel expenses, marketing publications, and trade show events.

Additional Marketing Expense that is a part of Other Direct Expense

			  Year 1           Year 2              Year 3             Year 4

PR                        0.21m             0.22m               0.23m               0.24m

Trade Shows               0.42              0.44                0.46                0.48

Marketing Materials       0.14              0.15                0.15                0.16

Staff and T&E    	  2.31              2.96                3.30                3.60

Revised Marketing Expense 

                          Year 1            Year 2            Year 3               Year 4

50-50 Interval             8.75             6.26                6.41                6.58

10% Interval               8.75             6.26                6.41                6.58

90% Interval               8.75             6.26                6.41                6.58

Revised Other Direct Expense 

 	
                         Year 1             Year 2             Year 3             Year 4

50-50 Interval            11.14             14.59              16.07               16.52

10% Interval              10.12             12.80              13.71               15.02

90% Interval              10.12             12.81              13.88               12.66

3. The JVTeam believes that forecasting the impact of other TLDs on the demand for .biz is crucial to sound forecasting methodology. The JVTeam has incorporated the impact of both, general purpose TLDs and the introduction of multiple business TLDs over time, on the demand projections for .biz.

The JVTeam has made the following assumptions about the impact of other TLDs on new registrations for .biz.

    1) Our forecast assumes that the market penetration for business TLDs increases over time and that new competing business TLDs will be introduced. We have incorporated this assumption into the profile of our market share assumption. For the 50% .biz forecast the JVTeam has assumed that our market share of restricted commercial use gTLDs declines from 100% initially to 60% in four years.

    2) Our forecast also takes into account the effects of general purpose TLDs in its penetration assumption of online business. These penetration assumptions have been weighted to account for some businesses preferring general purpose TLDs over business specific TLDs. We have assumed that over time businesses will begin to prefer business specific TLDs over general TLDs. For the 50% .biz forecast JVTeam has assumed that the penetration of online businesses that purchase business specific TLDs will be 4% initially growing to 30% in 4 years.

4. Within 6 months of contract signing, a test environment will be available for registrar turn-up and interoperability testing with the SRS client system. During this timeframe, the infrastructure will also begin taking landrush registrations. Full access to the SRS for live registrations will be available to ICANN accredited registrars 9 months from contract signing.

5. JVTeam will solely provide the bulk Whois service to all ICANN accredited registrars.

This program is detailed in the Technical Capabilities Section III 2.8.1: “The proposed data mart bulk-access program would: reduce the load that data mining currently imposes on the core Whois service; contractually limit subscribers in the ways they can use the data; provide a source of revenue to fund advanced service levels; reduce the incentive to download entire database without legitimate purpose; provide the entire database in a format that facilitates such data mining as conducting trademark searches, compiling industry statistics, and providing directory services. The registry will make the Whois data available to registrars, who will conduct the actual bulk-access program.”

6. The system is designed for 95% of transaction times for a post to confirmation of acceptance of to meet an average of 500 milliseconds. In the worse case 95% of the post to confirmation of acceptance is less than 3 seconds.

7. With respect to post for confirmation of acceptance, JVTeam will contractually commit to a maximum time of 3 seconds for 95% of the post to confirm transactions.

8. As stated in the Technical Capabilities Plan Section III 2.10.2, “the [projected] peak Whois transaction rate is estimated to be 5,000 queries per second [within the first year of operations], with an estimated packet size of 10,000 bits … the Whois server cluster is initially sized to handle three times the projected steady state workload, or 5,000 peak transactions per second.”

9. With respect to query traffic levels for the Whois function, a minimum of 3 million queries/day should be expected in the first year of operation. JVTeam is willing to contractually commit to 15 minutes update frequency for 95% of Whois updates.

10. Within 6 months of contract signing, a test environment will be available for registrar turn-up and interoperability testing. During this timeframe, the infrastructure will be available to take landrush registrations. Full access to the SRS for live registrations will be available to ICANN accredited registrars 9 months from contract signing.

11. JVTeam is willing to commit to the following timetable: within 6 months of contract signing, a test environment will be available for registrar turn-up and interoperability testing. During this timeframe, the infrastructure will also begin taking landrush registrations. Full access to the SRS for live registrations will be available to ICANN accredited registrars 9 months from contract signing.

12. Catastrophic failure at a single SRS site will not cause a failure in the SRS, as a replicated co-active SRS will be available to operate and deliver service. This is detailed in Registry Operator’s Technical Capabilities Plan Section III.2.13.8: “If an Individual cluster experiences a processor failure, the processor’s applications are transferred to another processor within approximately 30 seconds; however, the remaining processor nodes in the cluster continue applications processing without interruption.”

13. Yes. As stated in the Implementation section of the proposal, “JVTeam will build a separate laboratory system to be used for two types of integration testing: the registrar’s internal testing of software releases, and the registrar’s interoperability testing of their XRP-client interfaces …

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