Fadi Chehade, ICANN CEO, revealed that ICANN expects to approve several new gTLDs on April 23, 2013.
As Chehade said in an interview, the company has made great progress in the last few weeks to recommend first delegations as early as the 23rd of April. "We are now targeting to be able to recommend for delegation the first new gTLD as early as the 23rd of April. Having said that, I want to be very clear there are some things that we can’t control that may cause this date to slip, but even in that case we are looking for a slippage of days or weeks, not months anymore. So we are definitely now with clear visibility on a set of processes that allow us to hit the first recommended delegation as early as the 23rd of April", ICANN CEO says.
Earlier on, Chehade had commented that his personal preference would be to delay the whole new gTLD program by a year.
The major factor in the play is ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee, which has yet to formulate the Formal Advice on new gTLDs. Currently, the date is "after the ICANN meeting in Beijing", with the meeting ending April 11, 2013.
If ICANN is to follow the April 23 deadline, the company is probably unlikely to extend the window for filing objections against applications. The window is currently closing March 13, while the String Similarity Panel will publish its results by March 1, so many organizations will have to work on a tight deadline to submit their comments.
