The decision taken by some of the country’s State Governments to make a gTLD application will put Australia’s capitals on par with some of the world’s most innovative cities including, London, Paris and Tokyo. On June 20th, 2011 The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced its intention to release generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) to established entities anywhere in the world.

For a limited three month window, starting on January 12th, 2012, companies, cities and organisations can apply to operate their own gTLD registry, .sydney and .melbourne for example. In their press release ICANN said that “Internet address names will be able to end with almost any word in any language, offering organizations around the world the opportunity to market their brand, products, community or cause in new and innovative ways.”

The introduction of this new internet infrastructure will change the face of the web.  Currently there are 22 gTLDs, such as .com, .net and .org and thousands more will be created with this program.

Over the past few months, many of the world’s most recognizable brands have publicly announced their intention to apply for their dotBrand. For instance Canon, Motorola and UNICEF. While requesting tenders, UNICEF offered their opinion on gTLDs, ”Taking the long view, as time goes on, a name such as www.donations.unicef and www.cards.unicef will become more intuitive in a more crowded Internet, and thus more valuable because the name reflects exactly that of an organization and declares what it does”

In an effort to get other parts of Australia informed, Provident Link Pty Ltd will be holding an information seminar for Queensland based entities on Thursday 17th of November, 2011 in Brisbane. The presentation will give local organisations and interested brand owners the opportunity to hear and discuss how the new gTLD program will affect their brand and industry. Queenslanders hope to see .brisbane and .goldcoast domains to be added to the list of progressive cities to apply for a gTLD in 2012.

For information on gTLDs or the information seminar in Brisbane, contact Provident Link Pty Ltd through their website www.providentlink.com.au

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