ICANN urges APAC users to participate in Internet governance

Global Internet manager ICANN has urged people in the Asia Pacific region to participate in the process of setting future norms.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit organisation based in California, coordinates, manages and implements worldwide Internet rules and policies by taking views of global community.
"If we feel issue is important on Internet, we should have say on it. For Internet to grow, no government should be looking at it. It should be multi-stakeholder model.
"We often hear Internet and multi-stakeholder but sometimes it becomes very hard for us to understand what exactly multi-stakeholders means, specially in context of Asia Pacific (APAC) region," ICANN APAC Vice President Jia-Ronglow said.

APAC region accounts for about of half of Internet connections in the world despite its penetration being very low in some of countries with large population like India.
He was addressing APAC media through web conference.

India has proposed that Internet should be managed through multi-stakeholder approach and the governments should have "supreme right and control" on matters relating to international security.
A committee on Internet governance set by Indian government has favoured the approach and decided the country should try to collaborate with the US on the matter.
India has said under new transition, the body managing Internet should have "accountability towards governments" in areas where "governments have primary responsibility, such as security and similar public policy concerns."

India has also raised concerns over jurisdiction in case there is any dispute among people affected by Internet.
It has been assigned the task to manage Internet by the US Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) under a contract, which expires on September 30.
NTIA has decided to step out of its role of ICANN overseer after the contract expires and it be managed by global community and work is in progress to set rules on who should manage Internet post September 30.
Since consensus on some issues related to accountability could not be arrived by various communities, the process is expected to be closed by September this year if communities reach to an agreement.

Last round of public comments closed on December 21 and ICANN will hold meeting between March 5-10 to finalise all proposals. ICANN received 4-5 comments from India among about 80 comments it received over accountability of new entity that will manage or oversee functions of Internet.
The proposal will be then sent to US government which is expected to take 60-90 days to gets approvals from various authorities within their government.
"If everything goes as per schedule then US government should be able to complete the transition by September 2016," Theresa Swinehart, Senior Advisor to the President on Strategy, ICANN said.