New Top-Level Domains

ICANN wants public input on its development of a new process for creating, approving, and adding new gTLDs (generic top-level domains like .com, .org etc) to the Internet.

“This is all about choice. We want the diversity of the world’s people, geography and business to be able to be represented in the domain name system,” said Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN. “That is why it’s so important for people to participate in the development of a new gTLD process. We will get input from businesses, governments, and the public at large in the coming months and at the ICANN meeting in Puerto Rico on 25-29 June 2007.”

The new process will lay out how gTLDs are proposed and approved, and should allow for a much wider variety of them to be added in a timely, predictable, and efficient manner. ICANN expects that with the public input, the system for approving new gTLDs should be completed by the end of the year, and applications for new top-level domains could be accepted starting in early 2008.

“If the new approval process comes on-line as planned, the global Internet could see new top-level domains added and available between June and August 2008,” Dr Twomey added. ICANN has overseen two previous extensions of the Internet space: first in 2000 when seven TLDs including .info and .name were added to the domain name system (DNS); the second started in 2004 leading to six more being approved, including .asia.

“When ICANN was founded in 1998, only a few TLDs, including .com, were generally available to the public for registration of domain names. Our mission has been to expand the number of TLDs available to users – and we have made great progress,” Dr Twomey said. “When the new approval process is complete, Internet users around the globe will have more choice in the TLD market.”
Currently there are 120 million registered domain names (unique web addresses) in the world. Of these, 80 million are gTLDs (as opposed to country code top-level domains like .de for Germany or .ca for Canada). The most commonly used gTLD is “.com”, with 62 million domains. There are another 15 gTLDs in existence including .aero to .travel.

Development of the new gTLD process began in December 2005. ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO) has guided the policy development process and its work will be used as the basis for discussion on creating a new approval process. Materials used in meetings, plus minutes and audio recordings, are available on ICANN’s website at http://gnso.icann.org/calendar/.