By Michele Neylon on October 10, 2012 in icann, Domain Industry & Internet News

Seemingly the Cayman Islands has appointed a representative to ICANN’s GAC* – where all the governments hang out.

Their appointee, who should be attending the meeting in Toronto next week [14-19 Oct], is Mr Samuel Rose. Mr Rose hails from the Caymans’ Ministry of Finance, Tourism and Development. [Rose is the Deputy Chief Officer]

This appointment might have something to do with Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry being based there.

For more on this story go to:

http://www.internetnews.me/2012/10/10/cayman-islands-joins-gac/

*GAC is the Governmental Advisory Committee

ICANN** receives input from governments through the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). The GAC’s key role is to provide advice to ICANN on issues of public policy, and especially where there may be an interaction between ICANN’s activities or policies and national laws or international agreements. The GAC usually meets three times a year in conjunction with ICANN meetings, where it discusses issues with the ICANN Board and other ICANN Supporting Organisations, Advisory Committees and other groups. The GAC may also discuss issues between times with the Board either through face-to-face meetings or by teleconference.

**ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

See letter from ICANN to GAC July 22, 2012 to be discussed at ICANN Toronto Conference.

Uniregistry is a company in Governor’s Square, Unit 3-110, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. Their website is http://uniregistry.com/contact-us

According to ICANNWiki:

Uniregistry is a new registry operator established and managed by a group of Internet and domain name industry experts. The company’s technical infrastructure is designed and maintained by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), a non profit organization dedicated to developing and distributing open source software worldwide, and involved in the development of DNS, DNSSEC, IPv6, and BIND.

The company was officially launched on June 11, 2012 (see attachment Uniregistry] and it is headed by its Managing Director Frank Schilling, owner of one of the world’s largest domain name portfolios. The original trademark application for Uniregistry, however, was filed in 2010, and the domain name was registered in 2006 by Bret Fausett, who also registered the .net, .org, .info, and .biz versions the following year.

At the time of the company’s launch, Schilling refused to reveal the exact number and names of the domain name strings the company applied for. According to him, the gTLDs were selected by the company’s founders, and he was confident that the gTLDs would be successful. He said, “We strongly believe in the gTLDs we have chosen and are 100% committed to their long-term success. These new names look better, sound better, and represent a big opportunity for brands to market themselves on the Internet in a different way.”

Just prior to reveal day, Schilling confirmed that he invested $60 million in his company and is pursuing 54 gTLDs. He publicly announced his bids for .lol and .home, saying that he knew that both strings would be highly desirable and that he thinks they would definitely be auctioned by ICANN. Google had previously announced its application for .lol, and GoDaddy and other companies applied for .home. Schilling said that his company will try to acquire the strings through auction.

Uniregistry has applied for the following TLDs:

.art, .auction, .audio, .auto, .blackfriday, .cars, .christmas, .click, .country, .deal, .design, .diet, .family, .fashion, .flowers, .free, .furniture, .game, .garden, .gift, .gratis, .guitars, .help, .hiphop, .home, .hosting, .inc, .juegos, .link, .lol, .love, .marketing, .media, .mom, .news, .photo, .pics, .pizza, .property, .racing, .realestate, .restaurant, .sale, .save, .school, .sexy, .shopping, .store, .style, .tattoo, .team, .tech, .video, .yoga.

Frank Schilling is an experienced domain name investor and operator. He lives in the Cayman Islands. He is a highly regarded Internet investor who saw, early on, the generic domain name business as a growth opportunity.

Frank Schilling has his own blog called Domain Name Sales Seven Mile, which he has been administering since 2007. He was the first person to suggest a public television program about domain investing, in 2002.

Frank Schilling was the Managing Director of Domain Name Sales Corp, which eventually became iRegistry.

However, Frank Schilling decided to do more than just sell domain names, and instead use his successful personal experience to help others with the administration of their own portfolios. Thus, Frank Schilling founded NAmedia in 2001.[3] Since then NAmedia has become a leading domain name administrator.

In the beginning of 2011, Frank Schilling declared that business NAmedia he was able to make $7 million dollars from the sales of around 250 domains, “without trying to hard”.