Application Comment Details

Comment to Amendment filed by Dish DBS

to its .MOBILE Application (#1-2012-89566)

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

CTIA – The Wireless Association® is an international nonprofit membership organization that has represented the wireless communications industry since 1984. CTIA is composed of over 250 member companies that provide telecommunications and mobile wireless products and services to governments, companies, and individual users in more than 170 countries worldwide. On behalf of the Mobile Wireless Community, CTIA submits the following comments on the amendment Dish DBS Corporation filed to its pending application (#1-2012-89566), posted May 5, 2015, seeking delegation of the .MOBILE New generic Top Level Domain (“gTLD”) string.

Consistent with ICANN’s New gTLD procedures and commitments to protect community interests, CTIA filed a Community Objection to that application, Dish, a competitor in the Mobile Wireless Community, proposed to operate .MOBILE as a “closed” gTLD with all .MOBILE domain names reserved for the exclusive use of Dish and its affiliates. Last year, the International Chamber of Commerce (“ICC”) ruled on CTIA’s virtually identical Community Objection to the “closed generic” application for .MOBILE filed by Amazon EU S.À R.L., which was substantially similar to Dish’s current application. CTIA – The Wireless Association® (USA) v. Amazon EU S. À R.L. (Luxemborg), Case No. EXP/499/ICANN/116 (rel. April 10, 2014) ICC Expert Mr. Kap-You (Kevin) Kim found that:

(i) the Mobile Wireless Community is a bona fide community closely associated with the .MOBILE gTLD;

(ii) CTIA is a “globally recognized” representative of that community; and

(iii) permitting Amazon to reserve use of the .MOBILE gTLD exclusively to itself and its affiliates would materially harm the Mobile Wireless Community.

As a result, CTIA prevailed on its Objection, and the Amazon application will not proceed.

Dish has now filed an amendment in which it purports to agree to operate .MOBILE on an “Open and Non-Discriminatory” instead of a “closed” basis. Unfortunately, as shown below, the Dish amendment fails to provide adequate protections for Members of the Mobile Wireless Community from the significant risk of anticompetitive abuse of .MOBILE domain names by Dish. Dish’s proposed non-discrimination standard is unduly qualified and riddled with holes. Moreover, Dish has intentionally retained the right to exploit exclusive registry privileges to reserve and allocate to itself and its affiliates the most valuable of the .MOBILE domain names (“cherry-picking”), and Dish has made no effort to establish any viable mechanisms to detect potential violations of Dish’s claimed pro-competitive standards.