Applications for the New gTLD will begin on January 12.

The New gTLD Program will launch on January 12, 2012. On that date, ICANN will begin accepting applications for domains under this program.

The new gTLD simplifies the process of creating new top-level domains. In particular, companies will now be able to register domains corresponding to trademarks (for example, .bmw), associations will be able to register domains corresponding to industry names, and governments of countries and individual cities will be able to register domains with the names of cities and regions.

Applications for the New gTLD will be open from January 12 to April 12, 2012. Filing an application will cost $185,000.

In total, ICANN plans to receive between 500 and 1,000 applications from companies and organizations around the world.

Experts estimate that the cost of owning a domain in the first year will be approximately $1 million. This amount includes the total application fee, annual maintenance, and administrative costs for maintaining the domain.