.home

Status:	Proposed
Type:	Generic
Category:	Real Estate
More information:

.home is a new TLD proposed to ICANN's New gTLD Program.

Current Applicants

1. Top Level Domain Holdings, a company engaged in acquiring, operating and providing TLD consultancy services and back-end registry solutions confirmed that the .home string was one of the 68 TLDs applied for by the company on its behalf. This applicant submitted a Public Interest Commitment, which can be downloaded here.
2. Uniregistry, a new registry operator headed by Frank Schilling also applied for the string.
3. Donuts (Baxter Pike, LLC), one of 307 applications submitted by the company. This applicant submitted a Public Interest Commitment, which can be downloaded here.
4. Dot Home LLC
5. Dothome Ltd. (Defender Direct), formerly an application submitted by DotHome / CGR E-Commerce Ltd
6. Google (Charleston Road Registry Inc.)
7. HOME REGISTRY INC.
8. Lifestyle Domain Holdings, Inc.
9. Merchant Law Group LLP
10. Radix (DotHome Inc.), a subsidiary of Directi Group that was created to submit 31 TLD applications

Radix

Radix received a GAC Early Warning as an entire applicant, where each one of the applicants was flagged by the U.S. Government. This seems to be the only time a portfolio applicant had all of their applications warned. The issue does not deal with the technical capabilities or thematic content of their applications, but rather the inclusion of an email address associated with the US' Federal Bureau of Investigation. It seems that Radix included correspondence with this address as a recommendation with each of their applications.

Developments

.Home Application Sold

In the first instance of an application being sold, the application originally submitted by DotHome / CGR E-Commerce Ltd was amended to remove all references to that company and its leadership and were replaced with references to Dothome Ltd. (Defender Direct). The original application was associated with the industry veterans Constantine Roussos and Tina Dam. The new applicant is the second largest home security company in the U.S. The changes to the applications were part of 29 application amendments approved by ICANN.

TLDH & $15mm Auction Funding

On February 26 2013, Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd. announced that it had entered into a funding agreement worth $15 million to be used in the case of auction for a specific unnamed TLD. The investor will not receive ownership of the TLD but a share of future revenues. TLDH did not name the TLD that the funds are directed for, and it is in 11 head to head contentions and 12 featuring more than one contender.

GoDaddy Withdraws

The company had originally applied for .home, but in March 2013, the company announced that it was withdrawing its applications for .casa and .home, and only sticking with its Brand TLD application for .godaddy. It was noted that it was withdrawing its applications to focus on its core registrar business, thereby removing competition with competitive applicants it could work with as future registries and eliminating concerns that it will promote its own TLDs ahead of others'. The announcements were made at an event, Registry Days, meant to open a dialogue between the world's largest registrar and new gTLd applicants. The applications were withdrawn in time to receive a 70% refund for each of the $185,000 application fees.

Technical Concerns Impede Delegation

ICANN hired firm Interisle Consulting to carry out an independent investigation on the issues that may arise from new gTLDs that are identical to TLDs being used on internal networks. The firm reported at ICANN 47 that .home and .corp gTLDs were cause for serious concern since those strings are widely in use by internal naming systems. In response to the report, ICANN labeled the .home and .corp strings as "high risk" and proposed that neither of the strings be delegated until it could be proven that risk is low.

Sold Application Fails IE

The Dothome Ltd. applicant did not pass the Initial Evaluation after failing the financial evaluation. It is eligible for Extended Evaluation.

Top-Level Domain