The Directors of Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (“TLDH” or the “Company,” AIM: TLDH.L,), the only publicly traded company focused exclusively on acquiring and operating new generic top-level domains (“gTLD”), are delighted to announce that the Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) approved the new gTLD program at its extraordinary meeting held in Singapore today.
As well as overall approval of the new gTLD program, the ICANN Board also approved the following details:
The window for submitting applications for new gTLDs will open on January 12, 2012 and will close on April 12, 2012.
Initial evaluations of applications by ICANN are estimated to be completed in November 2012.
The communications period will begin today on June 20, 2011.
The final vote among the 16 voting members of the ICANN Board was thirteen in favor, with one opposed and two abstentions.
Antony Van Couvering, CEO of TLDH and Minds + Machines, commented:
“We applaud the ICANN Board’s decision, which marks an historic shift in the way consumers, brands and communities will interact on the Web.
“The extensive policy development period resulted in a program that has been scrutinized and commented upon in detail and reflects the consensus of the entire ICANN community.
“We are delighted to progress to the next stage of the new gTLD program which will mean making strategic investments and, through our registry services business, Minds + Machines, helping organisations, cities, and communities maximise the potential of this far reaching development on the Internet.”
In May 2011, the Company announced that it was supporting the bid for .MUMBAI which has the exclusive backing of the city of Mumbai.
For further information, please contact:
Top Level Domain Holdings Limited
North America
Antony Van Couvering
Tel: +1 917 406 7126
Europe
David Weill
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7881 0180
Nominated Adviser to the Company
Beaumont Cornish Limited
Roland Cornish / Michael Cornish
Tel +44 (0) 20 7628 3396
gth media relations
Toby Hall /Christian Pickel
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3103 3903
About Top Level Domain Holdings Limited http://tldh.org
Top Level Domain Holding is a publicly-traded holding company listed on the London AIM market. The company is focused on the new top-level domain space. Top-level domains, such as .com, run by VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN), and .biz, run by NeuStar (NYSE: NSR), are regulated by ICANN. ICANN has announced plans to expand the number of top level domains. TLDH intends to make targeted investments in this space, focusing on both infrastructure technologies and specific top-level domains, and recently raised GBP4.8 million in anticipation of doing so.
About Minds + Machines http://mindsandmachines.com
Minds + Machines is a registry services provider that works internationally with commercial organisations, cities, not-for-profits and entrepreneurs to secure and operate new web domains, known as top-level domains (TLDs). Minds + Machines is a wholly owned subsidiary of Top Level Domains Holdings, Ltd.