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David Cunliffe and Kerry Prendergast at the ICANN conference announcement. Photos: InternetNZ
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13 January 2006 Media release
Surf’s up – Wellington hosts major Internet conference
More than 700 people and representatives from 90 governments will be ‘surfing’ in Wellington next month as the city
hosts a major international conference on the Internet.
Communications Minister David Cunliffe and Wellington’s Mayor Kerry Prendergast today announced the ICANN Wellington
conference by straddling surfboards.
ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a non-profit international organisation that oversees
much of the Internet's operations.
The March 27-31 conference is the first time an ICANN meeting has been held in New Zealand. Considerable interest will
attach to a United Nations-led push to create a separate organisation to ICANN to provide governance of Internet issues
such as spam, cyber-crime and identity theft.
David Cunliffe said the government was committed to economic transformation. Better ICT was fundamental to that strategy
and funding had been provided to help bring the ICANN conference to New Zealand.
“The government’s Digital Strategy is now giving seed funding to encourage the rest of the country to match the
broadband infrastructure which has helped Wellington become known internationally as a vibrant, creative and connected
city.”
Mr Cunliffe will attend the conference’s opening ceremony. He will meet ICANN chair, Vint Cerf, an international
ambassador for Google, who is regarded as the ‘father’ of the Internet. Mr Cerf will also visit Weta Digital while he is
in Wellington.
Kerry Prendergast said Wellington is best placed to host an ICANN conference because the CityLink broadband cable and
wireless network is among the best in the world.
“Wellington City Council was instrumental in getting CityLink off the ground. That’s now paying dividends, with several
hundred foreign visitors here for a week and international media attention.”
Organising the conference is InternetNZ, the non-profit organisation that manages the .nz domain name. Executive
director Keith Davidson said InternetNZ was delighted to have secured such a large conference for Wellington. He said it
would provide an opportunity to showcase the initiative of CityLink and the city council in making Wellington one of the
world’s longest-established open access high-speed broadband networks.
“Just about all of the 700 delegates will have a laptop and will need constant, rapid connections to countries all over
the world. Because of the CityLink’s cable and wireless network, we can deliver that.”
Mr Davidson says the conference will provide some international perspectives about the rest of New Zealand’s woeful
record on broadband connectivity and the failure to unbundle Telecom’s copper wire network to wide competition.
ICANN’s mandate is to ensure the cohesion and coordination of the Internet’s core function for resolving issues about
domain names and numbers. The Wellington conference agenda includes some thorny topics, including decisions on whether
to authorise the creation of .xxx, a top-level domain name for pornography.
ENDS