ICANN will be convening two open meetings with the first scheduled in Washington, DC on Thursday, 11 December from 2-5pm, and the second in Marina del Rey, CA on Friday, 19 December from 10am-1pm.  The purpose of the consultations are to explore draft recommendations regarding the relationship between registries and registrars as well as other potential models that would be acceptable to a consensus of the Internet community.    The draft recommendations state that a single organisation operating a gTLD for its own purposes will be able to perform the role of registry and registrar, and that a organisation that is operating a registry for one gTLD would be allowed to act in the role as registrar for another gTLD.

For the full ICANN announcement visit: http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-09dec08-en.htm