The application for the .durban domain has passed the initial evaluation phase of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), meaning it’s likely websites with .durban appended to their addresses will make an appearance this year.

That’s according to the .ZA Domain Name Authority, which explains that Icann wanted to determine if the applicant possessed the required financial and technical ability to operate a top-level domain.

“This development is significant because it means the application has overcome the main evaluation hurdles,” the authority says. “This makes it likely that we will see [website addresses] ending with .durban, such as tourism.durban and police.durban by year-end.”

The .durban project involves collaboration between the authority, the ZA Central Registry and the department of communications. The parties are also seeking to register .capetown and .joburg as top-level domains.

The decision to have the ZA Central Registry apply to Icann for the three city domains came after the .ZA Domain Name Authority secured the support of government and the relevant metro municipalities. Icann began the process of registering new top-level domains in 2012.

“We applied for the three cities because we saw a firm trend where leading international cities are planning to secure their exclusive namespaces,” says .ZA Domain Name Authority chairman Hasmukh Gajjar.

The .durban application was ranked ahead of the .capetown and .joburg applications when Icann decided to use a lottery to prioritise the more than 1 300 applications it received last year. This rank set .durban to be evaluated ahead of the other two cities. “The successful evaluation of .durban means that the ZA Central Registry and its partners can confidently expect the .capetown and .joburg applications to pass the initial evaluation stage as well.”

As custodians of their cities’ names, the relevant metro municipalities will receive priority when it comes to registering names for their entities and programmes.

In addition, provincial and national governments will be given an opportunity to reserve their names and names of national heritage in the three domains before the general public is allowed to register names on first-come, first-served basis. These names will form part of a reserved name list, which is an important requirement by Icann for the new domains.

Icann has also ensured that the new domains prevent intellectual property and trademark abuse by allowing trademark owners an opportunity to register their trademarks in a database that will be used to ensure that names that are applied for do not infringe trademarks.

A joint policy and project workshop is planned with the three cities on 31 May to give detailed feedback and to outline launch plans for the three city domains. This will be followed by a consultation with national and provincial governments to prepare them to reserve their names. — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media