Pay Rs 91 lakh to own top-level website domain name

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today said it would charge applicants $1,85,000 (about Rs 91 lakh) to get generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) after it allowed expansion of suffixes for websites.

Top-level domain names comprise letters that appear to the right of the last "dot" in a website like '.Com' Currently, ICANN allows 22 suffixes on addresses such as .Net, .Com and .Org.

"We will start accepting applications for gTLD from January 12 onwards. The rates of $1,85,000 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.

Justifying the pricing, he said the amount has been calculated after consultations with various bodies across the world and included operational and litigation expenses.

He added that in May, ICANN will publish the list of gTLDs received for public review.

ICANN had recently announced opening up of registration of new internet domain names. Now, the domain names 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 like .Anything.

This will help inclusion of words of Indian origin as well.

Formed in 1998, ICANN is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world.

"In case, anyone has an objection to it, they can write to us and we will follow the procedure to address the issues," Beckstrom said.

He added that in cases, where there are multiple eligible applicants, ICANN may opt for auctioning those gTLDs.

"However, in all the cases, we may not go for auction. If there are multiple applicants and one of the applicant represents larger community interest, the gTLD will be awarded to that applicant," Beckstrom said.

He said that ICANN has issued a guidebook, which an applicant 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 said.

ICANN has agreed to accept gTLD in seven Indian regional languages, N.Ravishankar, Additional Secretary. Department of Information Technology told reporters. It has also agreed to allocate '.Bharat', in Hindi script, to India, he said.