ICANN's 57th meeting that will start in less than a month in Hyderabad (India) could be complicated by some technical problems. This information was published in the ICANN Corporation's official blog. The problem is that any event of such magnitude requires very serious preparation. In particular, on every meeting ICANN brings about 100 tons of various equipment. Some of these goods are delivered by sea; unfortunate incident that happened on one of the cargo ships is the reason for technical problems. Back in the beginning of September there was an explosion on the ship in the port of Hamburg and later a fire broke out. It took 4 days to put it out.
Fortunately, no one from the ship's team or firemen got hurt. However, the fire could destroy or seriously damage a part of the cargo. There were two containers that belonged to ICANN on their way from Helsinki to Hyderabad. One of them was located far away from the incident and at the moment has been successfully moved to another ship; it's on its way to the destination. Another container was quite close to the epicenter of the fire. It transported video cameras, printers, other technical equipment and also about 8 km of different cables. All of them could be damaged by the fire but this is not the only problem. Container is detained in the port of Hamburg for the investigation of the causes of fire, which could take at least several months.
ICANN Corporation is taking all necessary measures to find replacement for the detained equipment but warns that it is hardly possible to fully resolve the problem because of the very tight deadlines. At the moment it is assumed that the meeting of various groups that will participate in the meeting remotely won't be translated in Hyderabad live. Participants of the meeting in Hyderabad may experience slower response time when using the Internet.
