Plans to open up the internet to the creation of a unrestricted range of new top level generic domains as well as country level TLDs.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), today announced that it is entering the final stages of a four year process to open up the internet to the creation of a unrestricted range of new top level domains (gTLDs), like .com, .net and the current country level gTLDs like .au.
ICANN CEO, Paul Twomey, told iTWire that “We have had three years of policy-making around this and it is now coming down to implementation. We launched a draft implementation programme and draft contracts at our meeting in Cairo last month… By mid 2009 we expect we can start the process of accepting applications.”
Aside from restrictions in relation to trademarks, intellectual property rights, potentially confusing names like .kom and some character strings that will cause problems for the Internet’s name servers, like .1234, Twomey said names would be allocated on a first come first served basis.
Names can be up to 64 roman characters in length, opening up the possibility of any company registering its brand as a gTLD. Twomey said he also expected generic names like .shop, and .sales to be popular, but added, “it is hard for us to know, because it has now got to the stage where people are keeping quiet about their plans.”
Many second level domain names at new gTLDs (and at the established ones) have been allocated by auction to the highest bidder and highly sought after names have changed hands for millions of dollars, raising the possibility that the new gTLDs could be big money spinners.
However Twomey said he did not expect a domain name like rush for the new gTLDs. “We are not expected tens of thousands – this is not like getting a domain name.”
A significant deterrent is likely to be price – currently ICANN is looking for around $US185,000. Twomey stressed that this was not intended to make profit for ICANN. “We had to make sure that (applicants for the new gTLDs) were not being subsidised by existing top level registrants. So we decided the process should be cost neutral and we put a lot of work into determining what it should be. The figure that has come forward was $US185,000.”
