By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
The Internet industry is preparing for the expansion of a top-level Internet domain system next year, which will allow the use of customized addresses such as ``.seoul'' and ``.car'', as well as languages other than English.
The shift to the ``dot-anything'' system from the ``dot-com'' era will be the ``biggest expansion to the Internet in 40 years,'' said the international governing body of the Internet address system.
``The potential here is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the Net,'' said Paul Twomey, president and CEO of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ``It's a massive increase in the `real estate' of the Internet.''
ICANN approved the scheme to accept a whole range of new names on the Internet's addressing system last week. It is planning to start receiving applications in the second quarter of 2009.
Currently, the top-level domains are limited to ones such as ``.com'' for commercial organizations, ``.org'' for public organizations and ``.edu'' for educational institutions. Country-specific domains such as ``.kr (Korea)'' and ``.jp (Japan)'' are also in use, but they seldom match the popularity of ``.com'' domains.
The new system will allow the use of customized and creative names such as ``korea.times'' or ``big.apple''. But what is more exciting for the Korean Internet industry is the adoption of local language domains, such as ``코리아.타임스'' or ``대우.자동차''.
Several firms are already preparing for the new business opportunities. On Friday, three small Internet firms Digital Names, How & Why and IDNS Korea announced they had formed a consortium and will start the Korean domain registration service from next year.
``If we don't act now, foreign Internet firms may buy up Korean Internet addresses,'' said Yoo Seung-won of Digital Names.
It is not yet decided how much the new form of Internet names will cost. But Twomey of ICANN hinted that they may not be as affordable as ``.com,'' which cost $50 per year to use, likely being in the range of several thousand dollars.
``We are doing this on a cost recovery basis. We've already spent $10 million on this,'' he told the BBC.