SINGAPORE - Singapore's Minister of Communications and Information, Dr. Yaacob bin Ibrahim, and former Senior Advisor to President Bill Clinton, Ira Magaziner, spoke to the success of the multistakeholder model of Internet governance during the Opening Ceremony of ICANN's 52nd public meeting today, a press release by the Corporation stated.

"Singapore supports the shift to a multistakeholder model. We have consistently articulated our belief that no one person, organization, or even country, has a monopoly on the expertise and wisdom needed to meet the challenges that we are facing on the Internet on a day-to-day basis," said Ibrahim. "Such an inclusive, multistakeholder approach will enhance the Internet's role as a catalyst for information flow and economic activity."

Magaziner spoke to the growth the Internet has experienced under the multistakeholder model. "The fact of the matter is the Internet has worked and the growth has been phenomenal and the growth to WiFi, and the growth to mobile, and now the growth to the Internet of things and it has all worked," said Magaziner. "You see tremendous success coming from this model."

ICANN President and CEO, Fadi Chehadé, spoke about ICANN's continued prioritization of both maintaining the security, stability and resiliency of the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) and reinforcing the multistakeholder model of governance.

"First, we have continue to strengthen the confidence in our operations," said Chehadé. "Then we have continue to make sure that our community, our multistakeholder model, is strong. And all of this must continue to be rooted in the global public interest."

The start of the meeting comes on the heels of an announcement that, with the recent delegation of .NTT, .chat, .toshiba and .canon, the new gTLD program has delegated over 500 new strings into the root zone of the Internet. A full list of delegated strings is available at http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/delegated-strings.

"This is a significant milestone for the new gTLD program," said Akram Atallah, President of ICANN's Global Domains Division (GDD). "The Program continues to make advancements and enable enhanced competition, innovation and choice."

More than 1200 members of the global multistakeholder community, from over 100 different countries, will meet over the course of the week, both in-person and remotely, to discuss and debate the future of ICANN and Internet governance.

Those unable to attend ICANN52 in person are highly encouraged to participate remotely. Details for doing so can be found for any of the sessions listed at http://singapore52.icann.org/en/schedule-full.

ICANN's mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet's unique identifiers. ICANN doesn't control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn't deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet's naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: www.icann.org