Afilias Limited, the operator of the .INFO, .MOBI and .PRO top level domains (TLD) and a leading provider of registry technical services, today announced that its technology will support 305 new generic TLD applications to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The applications span a range of new TLD ideas, and include 18 Internationalized TLDs (for example, Chinese and Cyrillic), four community domains, four geographic domains and more than 170 “dot Brand” names. The remaining applications represent a wide variety of generic domain strings that are designed to simplify Internet navigation by helping users discover focused, easily identifiable content. Although the list primarily contains the TLDs of its registry services customers, Afilias itself has applied for a range of strings in verticals as diverse as energy and media.

“Afilias is helping a wide range of global entities apply for their TLD, including the .eco and .hotel teams as announced previously,” said Roland LaPlante, Senior Vice President and CMO, Afilias. “The bulk of the Afilias-supported applications are from three of ICANN’s five regions: North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. While these three regions will likely account for most of the overall applications to ICANN, Afilias applications have a bit more European focus due to the European base of our business.”

LaPlante added, “In addition to technical support, several of these strings will leverage our complete Managed Registry Service, more fully capitalizing on Afilias’ experience as an ICANN-Designated Registry Operator. We couldn’t be more excited about the growth that all of these new domain names will bring to the Internet in the years ahead. We are looking forward to helping our customers get their TLDs approved and successfully launched, and also to bringing our own new domains to market.”

Today, Afilias provides registry and DNS services for 17 TLDs and more than 20 million registrations, including almost eight million .INFO domains and one million .MOBI domains registered worldwide. In addition, Afilias supports .ORG, .AERO, .ASIA, .PRO, XXX, .AG (Antigua and Barbuda), .BZ (Belize), .GI (Gibraltar), .HN (Honduras), .IN (India), .LC (St. Lucia), .ME (Montenegro), .MN (Mongolia), .SC (the Seychelles), .VC (St. Vincent and the Grenadines).