Smooth Start for New gTLD Program
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, announced last week that the application system for the new gTLDs (Generic Top-Level Domains) of the Internet began on January 19th and is proceeding with no problems. Last June, ICANN had announced, after seven years of planning, the general concept and process by which anyone could acquire any word as a domain name beyond the current 22 gTLDs which include the well-known .net, .gov and .com domain names. Applications may also be made for words in languages that do not use the English alphabet character-set, such as Chinese, Cyrillic or Arabic. Competition is expected to be strong for such words as money, travel, food and other general categories of business and industry. Each applicant is allowed to apply for up to fifty different words.
Over the last few months, ICANN had worked out the details of the application process, one detail of which was the $185,000 evaluation fee to be paid by the applicant. In response to the feedback received by ICANN, a financial assistance program has been set up to reduce the fee to $47,000 for those applicants who qualify because of "the public interest" or the ownership of certain trademarks. "In-kind" and pro bono services will also be offered by ICANN to reduce the cost for these parties. Other organizations are encouraged by ICANN to contribute to this fund to aid worthy applicants who may not have sufficient financial resources to apply. Refunds for organizations who have already paid the full fee may also be possible. ICANN's evaluation of the new gTLD applications is expected to consider both the technical expertise and the organizational resources of the applicants.
Anyone interested in acquiring a specific gTLD must register before applying; the last day to register is March 29th. The questions to be answered by the applicant are outlined in the Applicant Guidebook supplied by ICANN. The actual gTLD application process involves the submittal of answers to those fifty Guidebook questions via the online TLD Application System; the deadline for this part of the process is April 12th. Around the beginning of May, ICANN will publish a list of words that have been submitted along with the name of the related applicant. No other statistics, even the total number of applications, will be announced by ICANN until then. ICANN plans to complete the initial processing by November and to finish the process by the end of 2012. The new names are expected to be implemented into the infrastructure of the Internet sometime in the first quarter of 2013.
Kimberly Dovander
Kimberly is the pro blogger in the WHS family. WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr... It doesn't matter - she knows them all. Send her a question, or a drop a line in the comment section below, and she'll get back to you.
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