.airtel New gTLD Application
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New gTLD Application Submitted to ICANN by: Bharti Airtel Limited
Application Downloaded On: 10 Jun 2014
String: airtel
Application ID: 1-1285-61415
Applicant Information
- Full legal name
Bharti Airtel Limited
- Address of the principal place of business
Bharti Crescent
1, Nelson Mandel Road, Vasant Kunj, Phase II New Delhi,
Delhi - 110070 IN
- Phone number
+91 1141666100
- Fax number
+91 1141666139
- If applicable, website or URL
http://www.airtel.in
Primary Contact
6(a). Name
Nupur Khanna
6(b). Title
Senior Manager-Legal
6(c). Address
6(d). Phone Number
+91 11 46666100
6(e). Fax Number
+91 11 41666137
6(f). Email Address
Secondary Contact
7(a). Name
Rahul Ramchandani
7(b). Title
Senior Manager-Internet Marketing
7(c). Address
7(d). Phone Number
+91 124 - 4222 222
7(e). Fax Number
+91 11 41666137
7(f). Email Address
Proof of Legal Establishment
8(a). Legal form of the Applicant
Public Limited Company
8(b). State the specific national or other jurisdiction that defines the type of entity identified in 8(a).
Indian Companies Act, 1956
8(c). Attach evidence of the applicant's establishment.
Attachments are not displayed on this form.
9(a). If applying company is publicly traded, provide the exchange and symbol.
National_Stock_Exchange_of_India / BHARTIARTL
9(b). If the applying entity is a subsidiary, provide the parent company.
Not applicable
9(c). If the applying entity is a joint venture, list all joint venture partners.
Applicant Background
11(a). Name(s) and position(s) of all directors
Name
Position
Ajay Lal Director
Akhil Kumar Gupta Director
Chua Sock Koong Director
Craig Edward Ehrlich Director
Evan Mervyn Davies Director
Hui Weng Cheong Director
Manoj Kumar Kohli Jt. Managing Director
Narayanan Kumar Director
Nikesh Arora Director
Pulak Chandan Prasad Director
Rajan Bharti Mittal Director
Rakesh Bharti Mittal Director
Salim Ahmed Salim Director
Sunil Bharti Mittal Chairman & Managing Director
Tan Yong Choo Director
Tsun-yan Hsieh Director
11(b). Name(s) and position(s) of all officers and partners
Name
Position
Mukesh Bhavnani Group General Counsel & Company Secretary
Sanjay Kapoor CEO (India & South Asia)
11(c). Name(s) and position(s) of all shareholders holding at least 15% of shares
Name
Position
Bharti Telecom Limited Not Applicable
Pastel Limited Not Applicable
11(d). For an applying entity that does not have directors, officers, partners, or shareholders: Name(s) and position(s) of all individuals having legal or executive responsibility
Applied-for gTLD string
- Provide the applied-for gTLD string. If an IDN, provide the U-label.
airtel
14A. If applying for an IDN, provide the A-label (beginning with "xn--").
14B. If an IDN, provide the meaning, or restatement of the string in English, that is, a description of the literal meaning of the string in the opinion of the applicant.
14C1. If an IDN, provide the language of the label (in English).
14C2. If an IDN, provide the language of the label (as referenced by ISO-639-1).
14D1. If an IDN, provide the script of the label (in English).
14D2. If an IDN, provide the script of the label (as referenced by ISO 15924).
14E. If an IDN, list all code points contained in the U-label according to Unicode form.
15A. If an IDN, upload IDN tables for the proposed registry. An IDN table must include:
the applied-for gTLD string relevant to the tables,
the script or language designator (as defined in BCP 47),
table version number,
effective date (DD Month YYYY), and
contact name, email address, and phone number.
Submission of IDN tables in a standards-based format is encouraged.
15B. Describe the process used for development of the IDN tables submitted, including consultations and sources used.
15C. List any variants to the applied-for gTLD string according to the relevant IDN tables.
- Describe the applicant's efforts to ensure that there are no known operational or rendering problems concerning the applied-for gTLD string. If such issues are known, describe steps that will be taken to mitigate these issues in software and other applications.
Bharti Airtel Limited anticipates the introduction of this TLD without operational or rendering problems. Based on a decade of experience launching and operating new TLDs, Afilias, the back-end provider of registry services for this TLD, is confident the launch and operation of this TLD presents no known challenges. The rationale for this opinion includes:
- The string is not complex and is represented in standard ASCII characters and follows relevant technical, operational and policy standards;
- The string length is within lengths currently supported in the root and by ubiquitous Internet programs such as web browsers and mail applications;
- There are no new standards required for the introduction of this TLD;
- No onerous requirements are being made on registrars, registrants or Internet users, and;
- The existing secure, stable and reliable Afilias SRS, DNS, WHOIS and supporting systems and staff are amply provisioned and prepared to meet the needs of this TLD.
- OPTIONAL.
Provide a representation of the label according to the International Phonetic Alphabet (http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/).
18A. Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD.
About Bharti Airtel:
Bharti Airtel limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa. The company offers mobile voice & data services, fixed line, high speed broadband, IPTV, DTH, turnkey telecom solutions for enterprises and national & international long distance services to carriers. Bharti Airtel has been ranked among the six best performing technology companies in the world by Business Week. Bharti Airtel has 200 million customers across its operations.
Mission of .airtel
Currently, the web sites of Airtel are registered under several existing TLDs like “.com” (Airtel.com), “.in” (Airtel.in, Airtelhellotunes.in) and other geographical domains (Africa, Sri Lanka, etc).
Mission of .Airtel is to be the entry point for all things Airtel – across geographies, products and services. It is to build brand recall and trust and build a seamless, consistent web experience.
Numerous and often non-synergized conventions⁄ cybersquatting in the existing TLDs may mislead our customers to various phishing⁄malicious web sites, leading to possible online fraud. Airtel wants to have an exclusive ownership of a TLD, as it intends to have complete control on the second-level domain names to have consistent presence worldwide for the Brand Airtel and provide a certain comfort level to customers, thereby consolidating and simplifying its online identity.
Purpose of .airtel
Airtel values the Internet as a strong medium to reach out to its customers. Airtel believes that owning a TLD (.airtel) will lead to the following benefits:
- Increased global brand visibility
- Quicker and easier recall
- Consistent web guidelines and design across geographies, products and services
- Search Engine Marketing⁄Optimization cost reductions
- Increase in the value of the Company by owning a strong brand identity
- Brand and domain name protection
- Deeper customer engagement and increased long-term brand loyalty
- Easy navigation for customers
- Enhanced security thereby increasing the customer’s confidence for online transactions
- Intuitive Internet navigation (product.airtel, service.airtel, campaign.airtel)
- Effective tool to avoid cybersquatting⁄ phishing
- Reputation Management
- Greater level of control over Internet presence with regards to costs, intellectual property and technical control
- Ease of communication with internal and external customers
- Rationalise our online presence (including our portfolio of domains and trademarks) by using .airtel as the gateway to our online properties
- Own- brand online community building
- Complete control over second level registration and use
- New business models⁄opportunities
- Social Media Optimization
- Stronger marketing tool for creation of online campaigns
- Minimal reduction of dependence on search engines in future
Airtel’s Indian web site (Airtel.in) attracts more than 14 million visits in a month, making it one of the most visited web sites in India. Airtel wishes to integrate similar visit volumes across international web sites to create a mammoth entry web site for Airtel globally.
Airtel India spends Rs. 85 crore ($ 17 million) on online marketing, production and campaigns. At a global level, Airtel wishes to optimize this cost through the new gLTD. Airtel will popularize the new gLTD through its overall corporate marketing budget (online and offline, wherever applicable and relevant) of Rs. 850 crore ($ 170 million).
18 a, ii)
Airtel will be using .airtel exclusively for its internal divisions, products, services, campaigns, partners and customers.
It is being estimated that in the first year after .airtel is allotted to Airtel, around 3,000 second-level domains will be registered, in the second year, 4,000 domains will be live and in the third year 5,000 domains will be live.
In the first-year, priority will be provided to the existing domains of Airtel across countries, products and services. Combination of transactions and information web sites will be brought under the new gTLD of Airtel. In the subsequent years, partners and customers will be provided with second level domains under the .airtel gLTD.
18B. How do you expect that your proposed gTLD will benefit registrants, Internet users, and others?
- General goals
The registrants for the gTLD to be availed by Airtel will be from domestic and international business divisions, partners and customers of Airtel. Due to this, only legitimate second-level domain names will be registered strictly under the control of the brand and the online team at Airtel center. Allocation will be done by these teams for products, services and partners based on business imperatives and to support marketing campaigns. Allocation to customers will be done in the form of a value added service or as a product differentiator for which no money will be charged. Complete control over the TLD will significantly improve security by minimizing opportunities for phishing or misleading customers onto fake web sites. Airtel will endeavour to provide a consistent experience for our customers across all our online properties using .airtel as the gateway.
Benefits to the registrants are as follows:
- Consistent web experience across countries, products and services for customers and partners
- Perception of enhanced security
- Platform for global branding, marketing and visibility
- Better SEO
- Brand association for strategic partners
- Value added service for our customers
- Platform for innovation
- Linking products with a master brand
- Shorter URLs
- Phishing related costs⁄cybersquatting reduction
- Excellent opportunity to secure online namespace
- Better target finite audiences through customized content
- How .airtel adds to the current space
All Airtel related web sites (Airtel.com, Airtel.in, African⁄South Asian web sites, campaign web sites, product and service web sites) will be accessible through the global gLTD .airtel, hence creating a mammoth entry web site for Airtel globally.
- User experience goals
Further, users of .airtel will benefit by:
- Assurance to Internet users that they are interacting with a legitimate web site of the brand Airtel.
- Deeper customer engagement
- Vanity URL for customers⁄partners
- Easy navigation for customers
- Enhanced control over the TLD
- Enhanced security
- Enhanced stability
- Enhanced expected coverage on search engines
- Potential decrease in the risk of customer confusion and furthermore minimization of the risk of various online frauds
Registry policies
As mentioned above in purpose .airtel will be used for Airtel brand across countries. It will only be available to the domestic and international business divisions, partners and customers of Airtel (including the Sunrise period).
In general, domains will be offered for periods of one to ten years, but no greater than ten years. Initial registrations made in the Sunrise period may have a minimum number of years required. For example, there may be a policy that all Sunrise names must be registered for an initial term of at least one year.
The roll-out of our TLD is anticipated to feature the following phases:
- Reservation of reserved names and premium names, which will be distributed through special mechanisms (detailed below).
- Sunrise — the required period for trademark owners to secure their domains before availability to the general public. This phase will feature applications for domain strings, verification of trademarks via Trademark Clearinghouse and a trademark verification agent, auctions between qualified parties who wish to secure the same string, and a Trademark Claims Service.
- General Availability period — real-time registrations, made on a first-come first-served basis. Trademark Claims Service will be in use for the first 60 days after General Availability applications open.
The registration of domain names in the .airtel TLD will follow standard practices, procedures and policies, which include the following:
- Domain registration polices (for example, grace periods, transfer policies, etc.) are defined in response #27.
- Abuse prevention tools and policies, for example, measures to promote WHOIS accuracy and efforts to reduce phishing and pharming, are discussed in detail in our response #28.
- Rights protection mechanisms and dispute resolution mechanism policies (for example, UDRP, URS) are detailed in #29.
Other detailed policies for this domain include policies for reserved names.
Reserved names
There are two categories of reserved names for this TLD: registry reserved and premium names.
Registry reserved names
We will reserve the following classes of domain names, which will not be made generally available to registrants via the Sunrise or subsequent periods:
- All of the reserved names required in Specification 5 of the new gTLD Registry Agreement.
- The geographic names required in Specification 5 of the new gTLD Registry Agreement.
- The registry operator’s own name and variations thereof, and registry operations names (such as registry.tld, and www.tld), for internal use.
- Names related to ICANN and Internet standards bodies (iana.tld, ietf.tld, w3c.tld, etc.), for delegation of those names to the relevant organizations upon their request.
- The list of reserved names will be published publicly before the Sunrise period begins, so that registrars and potential registrants will know which names have been set aside.
Premium names
As mentioned above in purpose .airtel will be used for the Airtel brand and internal divisions. Although the policy for premium names is defined, the same will not be applicable due to the defined TLD purpose.
The registry will also designate a set of premium domain names, set aside for distribution via special mechanisms. The list of premium names will be published publicly before the Sunrise period begins, so that registrars and potential registrants will know that these names are not available. Premium names may be distributed via mechanisms such as requests for proposals, contests, direct sales, and auctions.
For the auctioning of premium names, we intend to contract with an established auction provider that has successfully conducted domain auctions. This will ensure that there is a tested, trustworthy technical platform for the auctions, auditable records, and reliable collection mechanisms. With our chosen auction provider, we will create and post policies and procedures that ensure clear, fair, and ethical auctions. As an example of such a policy, all employees of the registry operator and its contractors will be strictly prohibited from bidding in auctions for domains in the TLD. The auction rules will cover all possible scenarios, such as how domains will be awarded if the winning bidder does not make payment.
Privacy and confidential information protection
As per the New gTLD Registry Agreement, we will make domain contact data (and other fields) freely and publicly available via a Web-based WHOIS server. This default set of fields includes the mandatory publication of registrant data. Our Registry-Registrar Agreement will require that registrants consent to this publication.
We shall notify each of our registrars regarding the purposes for which data about any identified or identifiable natural person (“Personal Data”) submitted to the Registry Operator by such registrar is collected and used, and the intended recipients (or categories of recipients) of such Personal Data (the data in question is essentially the registrant and contact data required to be published in the WHOIS). We will require each registrar to obtain the consent of each registrant in the TLD for the collection and use of such Personal Data. The policies will be posted publicly on our TLD web site. As the registry operator, we shall not use or authorize the use of Personal Data in any way that is incompatible with the notice provided to registrars.
Our privacy and data use policies are as follows:
- As registry operator, we do not plan on selling bulk WHOIS data. We will not sell contact data in any way. We will not allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission by e-mail, telephone, or facsimile of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations.
- DNS query data will never be sold in a way that is personally identifiable.
- We may from time to time use the demographic data collected for statistical analysis, provided that this analysis will not disclose individual Personal Data and provided that such use is compatible with the notice provided to registrars regarding the purpose and procedures for such use.
As the registry operator we shall take significant steps to protect Personal Data collected from registrars from loss, misuse, unauthorized disclosure, alteration, or destruction. In our responses to Question 30 (“Security Policy”) and Question 38 (“Escrow”) we detail the security policies and procedures we will use to protect the registry system and the data contained therefrom from unauthorized access and loss.
Please see our response to Question 26 (“WHOIS”) regarding “searchableWHOIS” and rate-limiting. That section contains details about how we will limit the mining of WHOIS data by spammers and other parties who abuse access to the WHOIS.
In order to acquire and maintain accreditation for our TLD, we will require registrars to adhere to certain information technology policies designed to help protect registrant data. These will include standards for access to the registry system and password management protocols. Our response to Question 30, “Security Policy” provides details of implementation.
We will allow the use of proxy and privacy services, which can protect the personal data of registrants from spammers and other parties that mine zone files and WHOIS data. We are aware that there are parties who may use privacy services to protect their free speech rights, or to avoid religious or political persecution.
18C. What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs (e.g., time or financial resource costs, as well as various types of consumer vulnerabilities)? What other steps will you take to minimize negative consequences/costs imposed upon consumers?
The online team in collaboration with the brand team at Airtel center will oversee the creation of all domains keeping the business imperatives in mind and to support marketing campaigns.
Airtel has adopted the above-mentioned and other policies to ensure fair and equitable access and cost structures to the Internet community including:
- no new burdens placed on the Internet community to resolve name disputes
- utilization of standard registration practices and policies (as detailed in responses to questions 27, 28, 29)
- protection of trademarks at launch and on-going operations (as detailed in the response to question 29)
- fair and reasonable wholesale prices
- fair and equitable treatment of registrars
As per the ICANN Registry Agreement, we will use only ICANN-accredited registrars, and will provide non-discriminatory access to registry services to those registrars.
Pricing Policies and Commitments
Pricing for domain names at General Availability will be $0 per domain year. Applicant reserves the right to change this pricing for promotional purposes in a manner available to all accredited registrars. Registry Operator reserves the right to work with ICANN to initiate an increase in the wholesale price of domains if required. Registry Operator will provide reasonable notice to the registrars of any approved price increase.