This website is designed to be a source of information for city managers, mayor’s offices and city information technology managers who are interested in better understanding upcoming changes in the new Top Level Domain (TLD) namespace, and who may want to apply for a City TLD.
In 2010, ICANN (the regulator of the Internet Domain Name System) will be opening up new TLDs for cities and states. For the first time, it will be possible to have internet addresses ending with “.nyc”, “.miami”, “.london” or any city, state or geographical area. Nine cities, including New York, Paris and Rome have projects to move ahead with such domains. Many others are considering it.
Most cities will want to run a formal RFP process to select a technical and/or financial partner to prepare the application and to run the back-end registry services once the TLD is approved. As can be seen in the timeline, however, there is a limited window in which to start the RFP process.
There are significant benefits to participating in this process, including revenue to the city and enhanced branding of the city on the world wide web.
