TIME, LOCATION
24 - 28 of June 2002
Bucharest, Romania

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the organisation that co-ordinates the assignment of web addresses for the world computer network, will hold its first Eastern European reunion in Romania.
The right to organise the ICANN conference, scheduled for June 24-28, 2002 was granted to Institutul de Cercetari în Informatica (IT Research Institute - ICI), following a contest attended by several Polish companies, as well.
"ICI's was a realistic bid and it was the excellent conditions provided by the Marriott Hotel that made the difference, as well as the technical and logistic offer put together with ARtelecom. Since this is the first such meeting in Eastern Europe, Internet development in our country was also considered," Victor Ciuperca, RNC (Romanian National Computer Network) and ICI official told Ziarul Financiar.
The event will bring together 700 people dealing in Internet-related fields. They are representatives of government and non-government organisations and of certain entities regulating and devising policies for the Internet.
The conference will be organised by ICI together with RNC and ARtelecom (RomTelecom's ISP), with the latter to provide all the "virtual" logistics required by the event. At the same time, ARtelecom will help organise videoconferences during the same event.
"We have stood by ICI ever since the beginning of this project to organise ICANN's conference. We will handle all Internet access during the event," said Corina Negrea, ARtelecom's commercial manager.
The ICANN conference, estimated to cost some $200,000, will be broadcast live over the web. The expenses for the organisation of this event will be covered by sponsors, the officials say.
The list of those to provide funds for the event is not available yet, as the sponsorship deals still have to be concluded, according to Victor Ciuperca.
ICANN, a non-profit organisation established by the US Trade Department in 1998, supervises domain name allocation.
ICANN's activity has been most controversial over the past few years. For the first time, the organisation in 2000 adopted several new top-level domain (TLD) names, in addition to the already existing ones (.com, .net, .org).
ICANN decided to introduce .info (for informational content sites), .biz (for businesses), .pro (professionals), .museum (museums), .coop (co-operatives), .aero (air transport industry), .name (for registration by individuals). The problem was distributing domain name registration to the various companies handling this process.
Only .biz and .info are currently accepting registrations, as for the other top-level domains no bids have been yet held to grant the right to process domain name registration.