By Rudy Ruitenberg
Bloomberg
Friday, June 27, 2008

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers backed the introduction of an unlimited number of Web-address suffixes, responding to public officials and marketers who want to expand beyond current domains such as .com.

Board members of the group, known as ICANN, voted unanimously at a meeting in Paris yesterday to allow new generic top-level domain names, according to minutes of the meeting. The group is now working on an implementation plan.

The 10-year-old organization, based in Marina del Rey, Calif., already has designated 21 generic top-level domains, such as .com and .net, and 249 country-code top-level domains, including .de for Germany and .fr for France. Users are demanding more, according to an April presentation by Tim Cole, ICANN's chief registrar liaison.

The expansion will "make a big difference in how the Internet looks and works," ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said at a news conference yesterday. "This is a historic resolution."

The group in 2000 introduced new domain names including .museum and .biz, and in 2003 added domain names such as .asia, .jobs and .travel. There are no known technical limitations to introducing new domain names, according to Cole.

ICANN chief executive Paul Twomey said the application and approval process for new names would start in April or May 2009. Noncontroversial, generic names may be approved within 90 to 120 days, and marketers would be able to start selling domain names with the new suffixes in the fourth quarter of 2009, the group said.

New domain names may have a business focus such as .perfume or .silk, or a regional focus, such as city names, the group said. If more than one entity seeks to register a suffix, ICANN said it is considering auctioning the domain.

Controversial names, including those that may be deemed objectionable on legal or moral grounds by a government, will be subject to a review process.

The group has spent about $10 million to study new domain names and expects to spend another $10 million to implement the plan, according to Twomey. It will seek to recoup that amount from registration fees, he said. The cost for registering a new top-level domain name will start at about $100,000, he said. Fees should decline over time.