185K is just the application few, the process includes some requirements to have a given amount of dough for operations in escrow, add what you need to pay attorneys, "experts" , lobbyists, and setup and staff a small corporation even if you plan to outsource part of the dayt-2-day operations to a back end operator, you can easy reach a $2M figure just to start playing on that level.

correct that the $185k is just the application fee, and there is a schedule of additional fees which may be applicable, e.g., extended evaluation if the application fails some evaluation criteria, and objections should any party with standing pay a fee to file an objection, etc., the continuity cost is undefined and the subject of lengthy communication between primarily myself and icann staff on the tdg-legal mailing list, though a vendor also commented on an aspect of continuity there as well. opinions on what a dead registry has to do (necessary functions) while waiting to time out and go "poof" or find a new operator sought. clue, in units of business organizations, finance, human resources, leasing, (law) and consensus policy, existing and advocacy, and registry constituency issues (icann policy), and registry and registrar contractual (law) issues are useful. the if-outsource-then-2m back-of-an-bar-napkin figure may be beer dampened, as standard offers by platform operators offer revenue sharing (whether all are equally exploitive of applicants as eventual registry contract holders is a question of projection, expectation, and taste) terms, resulting in significantly lower initial cost-to-acquire outcomes. a data point is .cat, which started with two thousand euros as its total marketing budget, and what i personally consider reasonable commercial terms from one non-profit (platform operator) to another (registry contract holding foundation). another is .museum, which started on a desktop in a kitchen. comments critical of their post-initial investment outcome should, though rarely are, be informed by restrictions placed upon the respective access to registrants, a subject just commented upon recently by both the antitrust division of the department of justice, and the european commission. a counter-example of course is the public record of a 2000 round standard gtld applicant, which spent approximately $20m on its buildout, before down-sizing its head-count by approximately 100 in late 2001, and which ten years of operational art has obtained an approximately 4% market share of generic names.

Yesterday's vote was just for the cameras, the program was approved long time ago, the staff just got the directive to start implementing, but there are still many holes in the process.

broadly true, though missing both the ongoing gac-board dynamic, and the senior leadership transition(s) as driving this particular date and place of announcement.

All those part now the ICANN ecosystem are celebrating in fantastic parties while the developing world supposedly has to be happy because they reserved $2M (when the organization has at least a $70M/yr running budget) for assistance...

this is still an area of active work, i was working on it ... yesterday and the day before, today, and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow ... there will be a gac+alac statement in about 24 hours from now on the subject of support for applicants meeting the qualifications contained in the mile stone 2 report of the joint application support working group. it is a matter of record that i contribute to the jas-wg, and that the alac formed a drafting team to work with the gac, and that i am one of the members of that drafting team. what i'd like to see is some "i can help" notes cluttering my inbox, or the list -- real soon now this is going to be blades or 1us in cages with 4 and 6 provisioning and cash and clue (see above). hell, the only reason i'm in singapore is that a high-status privacy-only issue advocacy guy quit and left a unit of travel support for re-allocation. i don't want to have to walk to senegal in three months time to finalize the forms of support available to applicants, and icann wasn't funding me, they were funding the guy who quit. -e