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Toshiba on December 13 confirmed plans to invest 350 billion yen over four years starting in fiscal year 2003 (April 2003-March 2002) to build two 12-inch fabs, one making system LSIs and the other memory chips.

The 12-inch system LSI fab will be constructed near Toshiba’s 8-inch fab in Ooita Prefecture in the Kyushu region of Japan starting fiscal 2003. Volume production is scheduled for fiscal 2004. The fab will target broadband network applications and is expected to adopt 45nm technology in the future, said the company in a statement.

The 12-inch memory chip fab, making NAND flash memory, will be built near Toshiba’s 8-inch fab in Yokkaichi, Aichi Prefecture, with volume production starting in fiscal 2006.

The company is reportedly in talks with Fujitsu and Sony regarding joint investment in the planned 12-inch fab in Ooita.

News source: DigiTimes - Toshiba to invest 350 billion yen in 12-inch expansion

No deadline

Lynn declined to speculate on how many new domains would be available, or when. “We’re not giving any deadlines yet,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

ICANN was established by the US Commerce Department in 1998 to control the Internet’s addressing system, which had until then been the responsibility of several unconnected agencies and volunteers.

But as the number of registered domain names grew into the millions, keeping tabs on who owned what became hotly contested.

The next batch will likely be “sponsored domains,” restricted to a specific industry or field. Companies say such domains will open new marketing and branding tools. Among dozens of suggested new domains are .travel, .news, and .health.

Any organisation can apply to sponsor a new top-level domain, though the final decision is up to ICANN. The organisation must prove the new domain represents a well-defined community closely connected to the proposed title.

It also must put up a US$50,000 (RM190,000) application fee.

Lauri Hirvonen, a senior manager at the Finnish telecommunications company Nokia, complained his company had been lobbying for two years for the introduction of a new top-level domain for the wireless industry.

“Two years is a long time to wait,” he said.

Howls of protest

Since its creation, ICANN has faced calls to open up the domain-name system to a wide variety of new domains such as .xxx, .web and .golf to ease crowding in .com and other established domains.

ICANN approved seven new domains in November 2000, but encountered howls of protest from the dozens of applicants whose proposals were rejected, as well as those who believe ICANN moved too slowly.

The new domains that did win approval then – .biz, .info, .name, .pro, .coop, .museum and .aero – have met with varying amounts of success.

Nearly one million names have been registered in .info, and more than 750,000 names have been registered in .biz, according to State of the Domain, an industry newsletter.

The .name domain has been slower to catch on, with only 85,000 registrations, while .pro has yet to make names available to the doctors, lawyers and other professionals who are its target audience.

Restricted domains have faced less controversy, as applicants have had to prove that they meet certain criteria.

The new .coop domain, for example, is set aside for cooperative organisations. Fewer than 7,000 .coop names have been sold since they became available in January, a domain administrator said.

Also at the meeting, the global body approved a proposal to push forward with ICANN’s reform initiatives, an effort to streamline activities that critics say today typically get bogged down in organisational politics.

The reform, spearheaded by Lynn, will reduce the decision-making board to 15 from 18 members, and ends the system under which five board members were elected by the public via Internet votes.

Under the reform, the 15 members are chosen by a complex arrangement of committees affiliated with ICANN.

A transitional board will be in charge until the new pared-down board is selected, based on bylaws adopted Sunday. The selection will likely happen in early 2003.

“Now with more efficient structures in place and sufficient funding there is a foundation for ICANN2 to have a successful future,” Lynn said. – Reuters, AP