ICANN to accept applications for gTLDs from Jan 2012
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Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has [said](http://zeenews.india.com/business/technology/pay-1-85-lakh-to-own-top-level-website-domain-name_32259.html) that it will start accepting applications for generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) from January 2012 onwards and will charge applicants USD 1,85,000 (about Rs 91 lakh) for gTLDs.
gTLDs comprise letters that appear to the right of the last “dot” in a website like ‘.com’ Presently, ICANN allows 22 suffixes on addresses such as .net, .com and .org. ICANN will publish the list of gTLDs received for public review.
“ICANN has agreed to accept gTLD in seven Indian regional languages and has also agreed to allocate ‘.Bharat’, in Hindi script, to India,” N.Ravishankar, Additional Secretary, Department of Information Technology informed.
ICANN had recently announced opening up of registration of new internet domain names, which now, can consist of any word or words, in any language and any script, including Chinese or Japanese, giving unlimited options to internet users as they can even have a gTLD. This will help inclusion of words of Indian origin as well.
“We will start accepting applications for gTLD from January 12 onwards. The rates of USD 1.85 lakh will be uniform for everyone who applies for it. We will evaluate all the applications received till April 12, 2012,” ICANN President and CEO Rod Beckstrom said.
ICANN has also issued a guidebook, which an applicants can refer to for registering the gTLD. “The guidebook, for example, says no country name, capitals (name) or city names can be applied for without letter of support from respective governments,” Beckstrom added.