The new TLD application system or TAS is lengthy and expensive. Simply registering for the TAS costs $5000 with the remaining $180,000 payable upon submission of the application. It is therefore essential that the decision to apply for a new top level domain should be the result of months if not years of planning and expert led guidance. This article aims to shed some light on the various stages of the application programme.

An organisation wishing to apply for a new gTLD should ensure that the application it submits is complete, punctual and provides all the necessary supplementary documentation required for the application to succeed. If the application fails, a new application can't be submitted until the next round of applications opens, the date of which has yet to be confirmed.

The user registration period opened on the 12th January 2012 and closes on 29th March 2012. All applicants wishing to make an application have to be registered by this date and have paid the $5000 registration fee. All applications must be submitted by 12th April 2012. If an application is submitted early, there is an opportunity for it to be returned for further work however if it is submitted close to or on the deadline then the application will proceed as is.

There are three main reasons why an application will not be considered. These are; if the application is late, i.e. received after the application window closes on 12th April, if it is incomplete, questions have not been answered fully or supplementary evidence is missing or if the registration evaluation fee of $185,000 is not paid. In most cases a straight forward application is expected. This will look like; the application passes the Initial Evaluation with no Extended Evaluation necessary. No objections are filed and there are no disputes to resolve. With no contention for the applied for gTLD string, the applicant then enters into a registry agreement and the application can proceed toward the final stage, Delegation. This process will take approximately nine months to complete.

There are however many other scenarios which will extend the process considerably. The initial evaluation could fail. An applicant would then need to apply for Extended Evaluation for the failed elements. String contention may occur with duplicate or very similar strings being applied for which would need resolving. Objections may be raised under one of the four grounds during the Objection Filing Period. The four grounds for objection are; String Confusion Objection, when a string is the same or similar to another string which has been applied for in the same round of applications, Legal Rights Objection, when a string infringes the legal rights of the objector, Limited Public Interest Objection, when a string is contrary to generally accepted legal norms and morality and Community Objections where there is substantial opposition from a significant part of a community to which a string was specifically targeted. These objections would be passed to a Dispute Resolution Service Provider for arbitration and if an objection is upheld the application does not proceed.

Each of the above stages has subsets of stages with defined processes. Applications can pass or fail each stage and therefore many scenarios are possible during the application programme.

After the previous stages are completed, the final stage of the programme is called Transition to Delegation. The applicant is required to complete a set of steps leading to the delegation of the new gTLD into the Root Zone including entering a registry agreement with ICANN and completing a series of pre-delegation testing stages. Approximately two weeks after the Application window closes, around the end of April 2012 ICANN are going to publish the public portions of all applications that have been received. This will include applied for strings, mission/purpose of proposed gTLD and other public application data.

ICANN's goal is to have a second round of new gTLD applications beginning one year after the current round of applications close but they are also planning on reviewing the effects of the new TLD application program on the DNS root zone before any further rounds of applications are confirmed so this is likely to be delayed.

In any event, finally, the Internet and how it is used is changing. The price tag is so high that at this stage the changes are likely to interest only the largest of corporations and organisations but as always, in time, the price should drop and eventually become of interest to smaller medium sized enterprises.

Tweet