The Plan follows the recommendations of the ICANN’s policy making supporting organizations and advisory committees. Those recommendations are available at http://ccnso.icann.org/workinggroups/idnc-wg-board-proposal-25jun08.pdf.

Since the recent closure of the first public comment period on the Draft Implementation Plan for the IDN ccTLD "Fast Track" Process, ICANN has been developing proposals for the next version of the draft Plan for community review and comment at the ICANN Mexico City Meeting (March 2009).

The public comment period opened on October 23, 2008, and was extended to January 7, 2009, to consider an updated version of the Draft Implementation Plan that was released on November 26, 2008, following the community collaborations during the ICANN meeting in Cairo, Egypt.

There were 17 comments from participants from 11 different countries. Participating were individuals and organizations representing: business owners, ICANN supporting organizations, domain name industry players, and governments.

"Although relatively few in number, these comments are important and being carefully considered as the next version of the Plan is developed," ICANN's IDN Program Director Tina Dam said.

Some of the key concerns raised by the community in the Draft Implementation Plan are related to open issues:

• The form of relationship between the prospective IDN ccTLD managers and ICANN
• Financial considerations, including IDN application evaluation fees and annual registry fees
• Prevention of contention problems between IDN ccTLD strings, and existing and proposed gTLD strings
• The role of IDN language tables

A new version of the Draft Implementation Plan and supporting documentation will be released prior to the ICANN Meeting in Mexico City, Mexico.