Corporate domain name management - eBrand Services

TLD market update

Registrars Are A Registry’s Best Friend, Finds Austria’s Registry Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but the latest .AT Report shows how registrars are a registry’s best friend. And nic.at has 430 official registrars that look after over 95 per cent of the .AT domain names with the remaining 4.6 per cent having their domains managed by the registry directly.

Two-thirds (67% or 290) of the 430 registrars that can register a .AT domain name are located in Austria, 22 per cent in Germany although Germans register 37 per cent of .AT domains and 11 per cent in the rest of the world. Interestingly, when looking at domain names registered through registrars, 15 per cent of Austrians use a German registrar. Conversely, German clients account for just 2 per cent of Austrian registrars’ .AT customers. The top ten registrars show an even breakdown between Austrian- and German-based with five based in each country and accounting for two-thirds (65%) of all .AT registrations.

The report, published three times per year, can be downloaded in full from www.nic.at/en/uebernic/current_issu...

Neustar Ups Registry Fee For .BIZ Domains By 7.5% Neustar have advised ICANN they will be increasing the wholesale price of .BIZ domains, the price they charge registrar’s, by $0.55 or approximately 7.5 per cent as of 1 February 2012. Registrants can avoid the fee increase by registering their .BIZ domain names before 1 February.

AFNIC Decree on New Legal Framework For Domains Sees Over 6000 Applications A decree specifying conditions for .FR domain name registration has seen the registry, AFNIC, amend registration requirements for terms previously classified as prohibited and reserved. Following the changes there were over 6000 applications for 30,000 domain names such as “islam.fr” and “internet.fr” in a 15 day application window.

.ORG Continues Rapid Growth With 10% In 12 Months The latest Dashboard report from the Public Interest Registry shows the TLD continues rapid growth with an increase in active registrations of 10.1 per cent year on year, and four per cent or over 350,000, in the six months, to the end of June. At the end of June there were 9.2 million .ORG registrations with North America (63%) and the European Union (23%) accounting for the regions with the most registrations.

RU/РФ Bi-Annual Report Finds Over 3 Million .RU Registrations And Higher Than Planned Growth By the end of the first half of 2011, there were 3,331,219 .RU domain registrations, which is by 1.6 per cent higher than planned. Over the 1st half of 2011, domain .RU grew by 202,559 registrations, or 6.5 per cent. And in the Russian internationalised domain name .РФ there were 855,751 registrations, which was 19.4 per cent higher than originally estimated meaning an increased of 155,324 registrations, or by 22 per cent.

.SE’s Internet Fund Open For Applications Supporting Swedish Internet Development As a means of promoting the development of the internet in Sweden, the Swedish registry established an internet fund in 2004 that has financed more than 170 projects - everything from DNS development to a solution for connecting reindeer herdsmen. In the last round 27 projects received funding from 166 applications. Applications for the current round of funding close on 12 September.

Nominet Reviews .UK Domain Expiry Policy, Surveys Customer Satisfaction Nominet have established an issue group to review domain name expiry policy while also launching two customer satisfaction surveys. The review will take into account issues relating to the expiry period, post expiry and the renewal of expired domain names more generally.

.XXX Applications Open For Adult And Non-Adult Trademark Holders The Sunrise period commenced for the launch of the .XXX top level domain on 7 September and will run for 52 days, and for brand owners they need to seriously consider whether they should register a .XXX domain name. Applicants under the Sunrise B period are owners of a qualifying trademark registration, who seek to reserve names in order to ensure that those names are not registered as domain names by others in .XXX.

At the close of the Sunrise Period, if no conflicting application by a Sunrise A applicant has been made, these names will be reserved from registration (blocked). However should there be an applicant under Sunrise A and Sunrise B, priority will be given to the qualified Sunrise A applicant to register the domain name. However should the successful applicant apply under Sunrise B, the domain name is taken out of the pool of available domain names indefinitely and there are no annual fees.

In addition, hundreds or even thousands of celebrities have had their names added to the list of names taken out of circulation preventing their registration. For more information on .XXX domain names, see the ICM Registry website at icmregistry.com.