New rules open internet addresses

How much would it cost to own your unique internet suffix - the portion of a Web address that is to the right of the full stop - such as .com and .asia? The answer: US$185,000.

That was announced yesterday among other changes that will give the internet a new look. For one, Web addresses, which now must use the Latin-based alphabet, will be opened to the scripts of several languages.

Reshaping the cyber address book is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) - an international non-profit body that co-ordinates domain names around the world.

Icann held a meeting in Hong Kong yesterday and unveiled initiatives to lift restrictions on top-level internet domains - such as .com and .asia. It will shortly begin to accept applications for new domain names, and the fee for a successful applicant will be US$185,000. That could be a barrier to applicants, Charles Mok, chairman of the Internet Society Hong Kong, said.

Icann also announced it would open the internet to address names written in the Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic and other scripts.

There are now about 300 top-level domain names in use. Icann's chief operating officer, Doug Brent, said some new internationalised domain names were expected to be created later this year, while applications for other top-level domains would be accepted from next year.