Today (April 30) had been the day earmarked as the big reveal day, when industry would find out what gTLDs had been applied for. However, rather than scrutinising applications and considering next steps, applicants and non-applicants alike are left twiddling their thumbs after ICANN again delayed an announcement on the reopening of the application system.

WTR previously reported on the technical glitch which allowed some applicants to see the file and user names of other applicants, prompting ICANN to take the TLD Application System (TAS) offline. The organisation had hoped to provide an update on the timing of the application system’s reopening on Friday, but has again delayed this – with news not now expected before May 8.

In its latest statement, posted on Friday, the organisation outlined its intent to notify all applicants, within the next seven business days, whether its analysis shows they were affected by the technical glitch: “In order to make these notifications, we are identifying each applicant file name and user name that might have been viewed, and who might have viewed them. To do that, we are reviewing internal system logs and full packet-level capture of all traffic to and from the application system from January 12 through April 12. Our analysis continues to show that a limited number of applicants were affected.”

The seventh business day falls on Tuesday May 8, and the schedule for reopening the system will be announced shortly after, taking us to at least the middle of next week. Following this, ICANN has stressed the need to allow “sufficient time during the reopening period for applicants to confirm the completeness of their submissions”.

ICANN has stated that its testing has indicated no loss or corruption of user data resulting from the glitch but all users will want to check the completeness of their applications, creating another challenge for the organisation – making sure the system can actually handle the strain when re-opened.