A month following first 4 TLD contracts signed, still only 4 signed

There’s been a delay (surprise!) following the first four TLD contracts were signed.

ICANN took advantage of its public meeting in Durban, South Africa last month for a public signing of the first four top level domain name contracts.

It’s been a full month since then, and no one else has signed a contract yet.

ICANN has just published a fresh statistics page to track the progress of registry signings. Although only four have signed so far, it looks like a lot more are moving through the queue:

– Contracting Information Request notifications to eligible applicants holding priority numbers 1 – 400
– 217 applicants have been invited to Contracting
– 38 applicants have responded to their Contracting Information Request invitation

ICANN had stated that regarding 20 contracts would be finalized each week. I suspect once the engine gets moving that will be the case.