The IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process was approved by the ICANN Board at its annual meeting in Seoul, South Korea on 30 October 2009. First requests were received starting 16 November 2009. The process enables countries and territories to submit requests to ICANN for IDN ccTLDs, representing their respective country or territory names in scripts other than Latin. IDN ccTLD requesters must fulfill a number of requirements:

• the script used to represent the IDN ccTLDs must be non-Latin;
• the languages used to express the IDN ccTLDs must be official in the corresponding country or territory; and
• a specific set of technical requirements must be met (as evaluated by an external DNS Stability Panel comprised of DNS and IDN experts).

The request and evaluation processes are comprised of three steps:

1. Preparation (by the requester in the country / territory): Community consensus and supporting documentation are assembled for the IDN ccTLD: what string to request, how the TLD is operated, and which organization will be running it, along with preparing and gathering all the required supporting documentation.
2. String Evaluation: requests for IDN ccTLDs are evaluated in accordance with the criteria described above. i.e., the technical and linguistic requirements for the IDN ccTLD string(s). Applications and supporting materials are received through an online system, http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/.
3. String Delegation: requests successfully meeting string evaluation criteria are eligible to apply for delegation following the same ICANN IANA process as is used for ASCII based ccTLDs. String delegation requests are submitted to IANA root zone management function.

At this time ICANN has received a total of 19 requests for IDN ccTLD(s) in the Fast Track Process, representing 11 languages. ICANN is looking forward to enabling the availability of all these strings in the DNS root zone, by completion of the String Delegation function and the synchronized IDN ccTLD evaluation, as well as finalizing the remaining received requests in String Evaluation, and receiving additional new requests in the Fast Track Process.

A staff support function is available to help all countries and territories interested in participating in the Fast Track Process. Please email [email protected] for inquiries for participation.

Updates about received numbers of applications and the number of completions will continue to be provided on the Fast Track Process web page at http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track.