Corporate domain name management - eBrand Services

Welcome to eBrand Services monthly update (ccTLDs and gTLDs).

Welcome to eBrand Services monthly update of news regarding updates to country code and generic Top Level Domains (ccTLDs and gTLDs).

Bulgaria Seeks Public Opinion on Cyrillic TLD
The Bulgarian Transport Ministry has a poll running proposing four options for a Bulgarian TLD in Cyrillic with the aim that the TLD with the most support will be applied for. The options that have been put are “българия,” “бгр,” “бул” and/ or “бя.”

SWITCH Corrects Deliberate Misinformation and Blocks Scammers
SWITCH, the registry for .CH and .LI domain names, is advising registrants of .CH names that they should be aware of third parties requesting them 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. However SWITCH are advising that they register and administer .CH domains 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. Our customers are thus in good hands with SWITCH and do not need to take any action.

In a separate action, SWITCH has advised they will be blocking domain names that are misused for phishing, or which disseminate malware, and removing them from the network, thus taking tougher action in the battle against Internet crime.

.CO Goes Live; Approved by as gTLD
With over 400,000 .CO domain names registered within the first three weeks of going live for anyone to register, Google has advised that .CO domain names registered and whose websites are used to attract an international audience will be treated in the same was as gTLDs such as

.COM in its search engine rankings.
EURid Launch Insights Publication to Examine Domain Name Market EURid have launched two new reports based on surveys, studies and research developed by EURid in cooperation with industry experts and sector leaders. The reports are: Volume 1: How Top Level Domain Customer Service and Brand Influence Customer Buying Behaviour; Volume 2: What’s in a domain name extension? To download the reports, seewww.eurid.eu/en/about/facts-figures/insights

AFNIC Launches Consultation On Making .FR Available To EU Residents and Business
French domain names are likely to be available to all European Union residents and businesses following the commencement of a public consultation that seeks to open up the .FR ccTLD. The consultation, is open until 12 September. AFNIC have devised a questionnaire that seeks to identify issues of concern to internet users, registrars, registrants, intellectual property firms, among others. For more information, see www.afnic.fr/data/actu/public/2010/....

IBM Likely to Apply for .IBM Top-Level Domain
IBM appear to be interested in applying for their own gTLD when ICANN begin accepting applications going by their submission to ICANN’s comment forum on the fourth version of the Draft Applicant Guidebook. According to a posting on the Minds+Machines blog it appears the gTLD is likely to be used it for internal purposes only. To date Canon is the only for-profit company to have announced they are applying for a gTLD.

.ORG, Public Interest Registry Celebrates 25th Anniversary of First Registration
The 25th anniversary of a number of TLDs is happening this year, and .ORG is one celebrate this milestone with the Public Interest Registry congratulating The MITRE Corporation for being the first .ORG registrant 25 years ago. Purchased on 10 July, 1985, MITRE.org was the first domain registered and now there are over eight million registrations.

РФ: Cyrillic Domains Give Russian Internet Users Greater Confidence Online
Internationalised Domain Names that enable internet users whose language is a non-Latin-based script, which in effect are all non-English languages, are becoming more common. ICANN, who has been gradually approving more IDNs through ICANN’s IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process has now approved IDNs in Arabic, Cyrillic and Chinese. In an interview for DomainNews.com, Alexey Lesnikov, Director General of RU-CENTER, the leading .РФ registrar, said during the Brussels ICANN meeting the success of the TLD has been in part due to extensive community consultation that included building awareness with registrars, internet users, government and other interested parties.

"Cyrillic domain names will be widely used within Russia within five years, especially within emails, and during this time Russian internet users will become used to Cyrillic domains," Lesnikov said. The full report can be read at www.domainnews.com/en/cyrillic-doma...

Third Registration Stage in .РФ TLD: Acceptance of Pre-orders from Specific Categories of Users
On 15 July 2010 the RU-CENTER launched the third Sunrise registration stage in РФ TLD.

Tuvalu Expresses Disappointment in Returns from .TV
The Tuvaluan government has expressed disappointment in returns from the registry operator VeriSign. Tuvalue is demanding additional payments for them to consider VeriSign as a future operator when their contract runs out, however there are those such as AusRegistry’s Adrian Kinderis who believe the country has done well out of the contract. He also believes Tuvalu is unlikely to get so much money in the future with changes coming in the number of TLDs in coming years.

UNICEF Set to Apply for .UNICEF
It appears as if UNICEF will be applying for the .UNICEF TLD when ICANN beings taking new gTLD applications.

.UK turns 25 and Becomes the Second Largest ccTLD
On Saturday 24 July the .UK ccTLD celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first .UK domain name registration. Among ccTLDs, .UK is the second largest ccTLD with 8,587,726 registrations as of 30 July. This follows .DE (Germany) with 13,762,500 registrations while the number of .CN (China) domain names registered has slipped dramatically to 8,250,000 (as of 30 April, the latest statistics publicly available) from a peak of 13,680,700 in November 2009 due to changes in registration requirements and the end of promotions with cheaper registration fees.