21 Indian companies including RIL, Airtel apply for domain names priced over Rs 1 crore each

NEW DELHI: Leading corporate houses like Reliance Industries, Airtel and State Bank of India have applied for use of word of their choice to replace .com, .net and the other usual suffixes on their website addresses.

RIL, Airtel and SBI made applications for "top-level domains" such as .Indians, .RIL, .Bharti, .SBI rather than just the traditional .com and .net have been made by these firms to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ( Icann).

Icann had in January this year invited applications from companies, organisations and individuals who can come up with $ 185,000 (over Rs 1 crore) to buy specific words that will replace the present top level domain names in practice like .com, .net, .org, .in and the other usual suffixes on their website addresses.

Companies applying for the generic top level domain (gTLD)are required to provide bank guarantees of $ 2,50,000 (Rs 1.38 crore).

According to Icann, Bharti Airtel has applied for .Airtel and its sister concern Bharti Enterprises has applied for .Bharti.

This means that the group can have or allow any firm to have website name ending with .airtel or .bharti.

Similary, RIL has applied for .Indians and .RIL gTLD. SBI and Infosys each have also applied for two such names.

Financial service firm HDFC and it sister concern HDFC Bank, conglomerate Tata Sons and its subsidiary Tata Motors are also among applicants.

Broadcasting firm Star India, pharmaceutical company Dabur and Lupin, financial services company Shriram Capital, Automobile firm TVS have applied for one gTLD.

IT firms Nameshop, Infibeam Incorporation and DotPing have also applied for gTLD.

However, these firms will have to wait till January 2013 as ICANN, an autonomous body which frames standard and rules for internet globally, will take time to evaluate assigning of these gTLDs to applicants.

ICANN has posted details about the firm and gTLD applied by various firms and now has invited comments within 60 days from interested people that will be considered by evaluation panel while approving gTLDs that companies have applied for.

People having objections to these names applied have been given approximately seven months to file a formal objection to any of the applications received.

The evaluation period will end by January after which result of gTLD allocation will be announced by ICANN.