A few people have asked me about the status of Verisign's proposed Wait List Service given the recent Names Council vote to accept the Final Report of the Transfers TF regarding WLS. George Kirikos theorizes that the WLS is as good as dead.
I beg to differ slightly.
The final answer really depends on what the ICANN Board decides to do with the NC recommendation and the TF Final Report. My guess is that there is sufficient leeway in the final report to provide the Board with an opportunity to actually approve the WLS, but string it up with conditions that make the entire implementation rather beneficial to the community. If you read the final report, you'll notice that there are conditions that would potentially require the implementation of a standardized domain deletion policy and the redemption grace period before the WLS can actually be offered. And of course, this would entirely depend on whether or not VGRS would still view the WLS as being attractive economically if the Board requires a cost-based pricing review as per the recent gTLD selection process.
The fact is that there are still a ton of issues up in the air, and what happens next is anyone's best guess. I sincerely hope that the board can do the right thing without getting them into the catch-22 that seems to be looming. Catch-22? Try and approve a service generally opposed by the community. Also try and deny it against VGRS's strong Washington lobby.