Recently in ccTLDs Category

Nominet, the registry operator for co.uk, have published the summary and analysis report on their recently held consultation on the release of reserved short domains.

The document, which runs to 25 pages, covers the background of the consultation process as well as providing an overview of the feedback received.

The consultation was open from March 8th 2010 to June 8th 2010 and during that time over 150 responses were received.

You can download the document from the Nominet site here

I've been sitting on this "news" for a while, as I waiting on the registry to announce it ..

Fergal O' Byrne, who was the Irish Internet Association CEO and is currently CEO of startup Sonru, has been appointed to the IEDR's board as a non-executive director. According to filings with the Irish companies' office O'Byrne's appointment is effective from the end of May 2010, though it was only announced to the public today.

What is interesting, from a domain industry perspective, is that O'Byrne's appointment could signal one of two things. Either the IEDR are trying to change and actually want board members with industry experience or they are seeking to pay "lip service" to industry.

O'Byrne's appointment may be a good thing, but his role as a non-exec means that he won't be able to have as much impact as some of us in industry would like to see.

Of course it's been a busy few weeks over at IEDR central. They also announced last week that the 2nd quarter of 2010 was the "best performing quarter for .ie domain registrations in Ireland since records began".

While the figures for the quarter in terms of new registrations may have been up, the total zone size hasn't increased that dramatically and still hovers below the 150k mark.

You may also notice that the IEDR communications are now referring to "registrars" instead of "resellers". This change is due to the introduction of signed agreements between registrars and the registry operator in the last few months. More on that anon.

DNS.be, the registry operator for .be, has announced that Chris Peetermans has been appointed as its Operations Manager.

Several senior members of the registry's management team left the organisation last year.

Press release below:

New Operations Manager for DNS BE

Louvain, 29th July. DNS BE has a new Operations Manager, Chris Peetermans, and that means that the direction team is almost complete again, except for one position. The combination of promoting in-house specialists and carefully selecting external managers enables DNS BE to face the challenges of the years ahead.

Chris Peetermans got his Master degrees in electronics, option computer engineering in 1992. After a career of more than 20 years with Belgacom, of which the last 10 years in various technical and commercial managerial positions, he decided to move to a different telecom company. For several years he combined his managerial position there with the position of ICT manager in a company of the diamond sector. Therefore Chris has loads of experience in setting up highly secured LAN/WAN networks. In the meantime he also obtained the Cisco CCNA and CCND certificates.

This is a new move in Chris' career; since 1st July he is Operations Manager with DNS BE. He emphasizes on developing an even more professional organisation, with particular attention to quality, security and the availability of the network, without losing sight of the costs.

So DNS BE sees a creative and experienced ICT jack-of-all-trades enter the company.

Later this summer DNS BE will announce who will be the last member of the management team, the new marketing and communications manager. From then on, a boost will be given to DNS BE's communications policy. DNS BE will indeed be launching a campaign during fall to better back up its 450 registrars.

CENTR has announced an open position in its Brussels office. The role is being advertised as a part-time office manager position.

More details on their site

2010 is the year that .com celebrates 25 years, but it's also the year the .uk marks a quarter of a century.

Over 25 years the .uk namespace has grown and grown to become one of the most widely used addresses on the internet outside of .com

The growth pattern is quite interesting.

During the first 11 years only 26 thousand domains were registered. One million names were in the zone by February 2000, which then grew to 5 million by 2006.

There are currently over 8.5 million .uk domains!

If you're a fan of statistics you can see the latest numbers from the registry here

DotCo, which is the ccTLD for Colombia, is opening up to general public registration today.
According to official sources from both Neustar and CoInternet the registry has handled over 90 thousand registrations in the first 15 minutes!

You can expect the various domain / internet news sites to carry more updates on the volume of registrations over the next 24 hours and beyond.

While the initial registration phase of any new domain extension can attract a lot of media interest and a flood of registrations you need to look at the "big picture".

In a few months time when the initial excitement has died down how many new registrations per day will there be?

More importantly, how many of the domains initially registered will be in active use? And by active use, I mean not "parked" or simply redirecting to an existing site?

The key players in CoInternet's pre-launch marketing have a lot of experience in the domain name industry, so it was not that surprising to see how much hype they were able to generate in advance.

But will that translate into active usage?

I certainly hope so, as many people have invested heavily in the new extension, but I would be worried, as always, that a disproportionate number of names might end up under the control of domain professionals.

It's too early to tell obviously, so in the meantime let's wish them all the best of luck with the launch - it looks like it's going very well so far!

IEDR, the operator of the .ie ccTLD, has postponed its normal fortnightly purge until next Monday.

The registry operator normally conducts its deletions and suspensions of domains every second Friday, but has postponed this week's "run" until next Monday.

Switch, the registry operator for the Swiss ccTLD (.ch), has been the target of a scammer judging by emails they sent to registrants.

In the email the company underlines their stable position as registry operator and explains that another company has been trying to undermine them:

Email below:

You are receiving this e-mail because you have registered one or more .ch or .li domain names with SWITCH. At the moment, customers of SWITCH are being asked by third parties to transfer their domain name from SWITCH to a different supplier. The reason given for this is that it will soon no longer be possible to register domain names with SWITCH.

In order to prevent any misunderstandings and uncertainty, we would like to correct this misinformation as follows:

SWITCH registers and administers the .ch domain names on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM). The contract between SWITCH and OFCOM runs until 2015. It is possible for the contract to be renewed. You are thus in good hands with SWITCH and do not need to take any action.

With the setting up of our subsidiary switchplus, we have laid the foundations for the future - independently of our contract with OFCOM and its renewal. switchplus already offers e-mail and web hosting in addition to the registration of domain names.

As an independent foundation, SWITCH has established the internet for the Swiss universities in Switzerland. We make a key contribution to the stability of the internet and offer high-quality services for universities and third parties.

If you have any questions, our helpdesk will always be pleased to assist you.

With kind regards,

SWITCH Internet Domains

AFNIC, which runs the .fr cctld, has opened a public consultation on the future of .fr from now until September 11th 2010.

The consultation is in the form of a questionnaire covering various aspects of .fr domain name policy on the registration process and how this might be changed to deal with an opening up to all European Union residents.

Under the current proposed policy, for example, they will still require an admin contact with an address in France.

Full details of the consultation - including the editable PDF for the questionnaire are available on the AFNIC site

It's that time of the year again - Nominet election time!

This year there aren't any elections for the policy board, as they've changed how it's composed.

So the elections this time round are for the board.

In typical fashion, however, some of the candidates have managed to make a relatively banal election a bit more interesting ..

Check Andrew Bennett's blog for more details - this has also spilled over onto the members' forum, Twitter, Acorn Domains and a private mailing list.