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As well as opening the door to an influx of new web addresses, Icann has also said that it will allow Japanese, Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic characters to be used in registrations for the first time.

"It's a massive increase in the real estate of the internet. It will allow groups, communities and businesses to express their identities online," says Paul Twonmey, chief executive of Icann, speaking to the Times.

However, those wishing to register a personal or business domain name will be subject to a $100,000

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fee, and will need servers and other networking hardware required to run a top-level domain.

"These new names are not going to be for mom-and-pop businesses," says Twomey.

The high cost has been put down to the investment made in developing the new domain name system. Icann claims that it will cost $10 million to get the process working smoothly.

The registration system will open in April next year, and Icann expects the first domains to be in operation as early as the end of 2009.

As well as paying the hefty charges, applicants will need to show that they have a "business plan and technical capacity" for the domain, and Icann has said it will reserve the right to reject applications on moral grounds.

The move is expected to cause a bidding war around certain domains, as Icann insists any disputed registrations will go to the highest bidder, with intellectual property considerations taking second priority.

Currently the .com domain is the most popular online, with over 70 million registered sites, with Germany's .de suffix running a distant second with over 11 million.