David Gross Discusses Proposed Transition of Domain Name Functions to Global Multi-Stakeholder Community

March 31, 2015

Ambassador David A. Gross, chair of Wiley Rein’s International Telecommunications Group, was quoted in a March 30 Bloomberg BNA article about plans to transition key Internet Assigned Name Authority (IANA) functions from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to a global multi-stakeholder community.

Amb. Gross testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation at a February 25 hearing on those issues. His testimony was on behalf of the Internet Governance Coalition, an industry-led group with broad representation from the communications, Internet, and related industries.

Congress is unlikely to hold additional hearings until ICANN produces a final proposal for NTIA to consider, Amb. Gross told Bloomberg BNA. “We are encouraged that substantive discussions are going on, and it appears that progress is being made,” he said. “It is not known now if those proposals will be supportable or not.”

On Capitol Hill, “there is a sense of being careful and cautious, a wait-and-see attitude,” according to Amb. Gross, who served in the U.S. Department of State as the U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy from 2001 to 2009.