.Melbourne scores higher ranking than .Sydney in ICANN top-level domain lottery

The state of Victoria, iSelect, Open Universities Australia and Commonwealth Bank drew high slots in a lottery at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to determine the order in which ICANN will evaluate applications for new top-level domains.

The state of Victoria, iSelect, Monash University and Commonwealth Bank drew high slots in a lottery at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to determine the order in which ICANN will evaluate applications for new top-level domains.

Those and other Australian organisations have applied for new 'dot word' domains in the style of .com or .org. The new top-level domains are expected to go live next year as ICANN completes evaluations of the applications. About 1900 new top-level domains were ranked today.

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There were eight Australian TLDs in the top 500, out of 41 total Australian applicants.

The first Australian company to be drawn was iSelect, securing the number-173 spot for .select. Not counting the non-Latin language top-level domains, which were given priority by ICANN and took the top 107 slots, iSelect was the 66th drawn.

Monash University got the 338th spot with .monash. Open Universities Australia secured the 349th slot with .study. Victoria came in at 350 with .Melbourne. CommBank got number 378 with .cba.

Australian TLDs further down the list included:



Priority # Applicant Top-level domain (TLD)
413 Aesthetics Practitioners Advisory Network .salon
608 AMP Limited .amp
623 Motion Picture Domain Registry .movie
639 Webjet .webjet
719 Tabcorp Holdings .tab
783 National Australia Bank (NAB) .ubank
802 La Trobe University .latrobe
862 Motion Picture Domain Registry .film
929 PhysBiz .physio
938 Woodside Petroleum .woodside
949 iSelect .compare
954 Open Universities Australia .courses
981 Tennis Australia .tennis
984 National Australia Bank (NAB) .nab
1007 GlobalX .globalx
1019 Telstra .yellowpages
1095 Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology .rmit
1145 Bond University .bond
1148 Commonwealth Bank .commbank
1224 Commonwealth Bank .netbank
1352 New South Wales .sydney
1382 ANZ Bank .anz
Click here for a list of other known Australian applicants. Final results will be posted on the ICANN website.

The first new TLDs are expected to go live in July or August, according to ARI Registry Services CEO, Adrian Kinderis. Coming in 1000 places after a competitor could mean a year's difference, he said.

For example, with Victoria coming in 350 and New South Wales getting slot 1352, .melbourne could go live an entire year ahead of .Sydney, he said.

While the list provides a preview of what top-level domains we will start seeing next year, securing a slot in the lottery does not guarantee the address will go live because an ICANN evaluation is still required.

Also, if more than one applicant applied for the same TLD, ICANN will evaluate all of the applicants for that address before choosing a winner.

Tennis Australia, for example, was one of several applicants for .tennis. The group got slot 991 for evaluations, but won't know if it has the TLD until ICANN evaluates number 1326, Washington Team Tennis, and any others who applied for .tennis.

After the evaluation and any contentions are worked out, an applicant must negotiate a contract with ICANN and have its systems tested.

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