$50,000 price tag on new 'dot-options'

Domain name registries have been left frustrated and confused by the internet naming authority Icann's decision to charge $50,000 to anyone applying to sponsor or operate a new top level domain (TLD).

The decision to bring in the fee was taken at Icann's summit meeting in Yokohama, Japan over the weekend, after the organisation accepted the need to expand the existing number of TLDs, such as dot-com and dot-net.

James Panton, operations director at UK registry, IDR, questioned how a registry could recoup the cost of applying for a name it can't subsequently control. "Icann will have to set up shared registries, and a whole new infrastructure will have to be built. It's onerous for us financially and technically to meet the requirements of a shared registry."

Leslie Cowley, operations director at UK country code registrar, Nominet, said, "It's far from clear how this will work. Initially this was intended to discourage frivolous requests. There have been 57 expressions of interest already."

Cowley added that no new TLD will be up and running before January next year: "Nothing is going to happen very quickly, which is a frustration," he said.

Icann will begin accepting applications for new TLDs in August, and among the likely contenders are dot-eu, dot-sex and dot-shop.

Application forms for new TLDs should be available from http://www.icann.org by 1 August.