Internet domain names may soon no longer be limited to .com, .org or .co.uk as the last letters of their web addresses.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is meeting in Paris this week to discuss the possibility of opening up the internet naming scheme to allow for more domain addresses.

The not-for-profit organisation that regulates the net will this Thursday (26 June) vote on a proposal that could lead to companies purchasing new top-level domain names ending in almost anything they wish.

They would no longer be limited to .com, .org or .co.uk as the last letters of their web addresses; instead, companies or organisations could add their company name to the end of their URL. The elusive domain .xxx could also be implemented depending on the outcome of the vote.

The plan would also allow for the new domain names to be internationalised, and so could be written in scripts for Asian and Arabic languages. In effect, hundreds of new ones could be created by the end of the year, rising to thousands in the future.

Dr Paul Twomey, Chief Executive of ICANN, told BBC News that the proposals would result in the biggest change to the way the internet worked in decades.

He said: “The impact of this will be different in different parts of the world. But it will allow groups, communities and business to express their identities online. Like the United States in the 19th Century, we are in the process of opening up new real estate, new land, and people will go out and claim parts of that land and use it for various reasons they have.

“It’s a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the internet.”

Although specifics have not been released, Dr. Twomey said that ICANN is still deciding on the cost of the application fee for domain registration. The fee is projected to cost several thousand dollars at the least.

“We are doing this on a cost recovery basis. We’ve already spent $10m on this.”