ICANN has stated that it is "on track" with its new TLD plans, but if you were hoping to register something like .film or .blog anytime soon you would be disappointed.
The current situation is that the project is moving forward, but there are no clearly defined timelines.
At an educated guess predicting that registrations could open in 2012 might not be unreasonable, but it is NOT a "given".
Antony Van Couvering from Minds and Machines has published a revised timeline based on the current "state of play". It's not fixed or "set in stone", but it's probably as accurate a timeline as anyone could produce in the current circumstances.
Antony's timeline predicts an application round for companies wanting to run a new domain space (extension) in Q2 of 2011. Applications in that round would need to be evaluated etc., so you'd expect the process to last through until Q4 of 2011, with the public being able to actually get domains in Q1 of 2012.
It would be nice to see this kind of timeline coming into being, but I strongly suspect that each of the various stages will be longer than anyone can currently predict (based on how slow the process has been to date).
You can read Antony's article here or check out the timeline image below (click to enlarge):
What do you think?
The current situation is that the project is moving forward, but there are no clearly defined timelines.
At an educated guess predicting that registrations could open in 2012 might not be unreasonable, but it is NOT a "given".
Antony Van Couvering from Minds and Machines has published a revised timeline based on the current "state of play". It's not fixed or "set in stone", but it's probably as accurate a timeline as anyone could produce in the current circumstances.
Antony's timeline predicts an application round for companies wanting to run a new domain space (extension) in Q2 of 2011. Applications in that round would need to be evaluated etc., so you'd expect the process to last through until Q4 of 2011, with the public being able to actually get domains in Q1 of 2012.
It would be nice to see this kind of timeline coming into being, but I strongly suspect that each of the various stages will be longer than anyone can currently predict (based on how slow the process has been to date).
You can read Antony's article here or check out the timeline image below (click to enlarge):
What do you think?
; "New TLD Timeline March 2010 version")
; "dotcities screenshot")
New TLD Timeline Revised