Global Domain Name and Internet Policy News
VeriSign, Inc. announced Thursday the launch dates for their latest TLD, .web. The Sunrise Period begins on 10 December with a plan approved by ICANN. The launch comes a decade after the .com and .net registry controversially acquired the TLD.
According to the International Telecommunication Union’s Facts and Figures 2026, there are now 6.3 billion people, or 76% of the world’s population, using the Internet. But this leaves 2 billion people offline with marked differences according to country, income, gender and age.
Germany’s ccTLD .de was entered into the IANA database 40 years ago last week. Two years later in 1988 there were just six registered .de domain names when the University of Dortmund took over administration.
Microsoft continues to be the most impersonated brand in phishing attacks, accounting for one-third (33%) of all brand impersonation attempts tracked by Check Point Research in the third quarter of 2026, up from 23% in the second quarter.
The Brazilian ccTLD hit the six million domain names milestone last week, becoming the sixth ccTLD and eleventh TLD to reach the mark. The registry, NIC.br, also claims .br is one of the cheapest ccTLDs in the world, has almost 150 second level domains for registrants to choose from and was one of the first two ccTLDs to adopt DNSSEC.
2025 ended with 386.9 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 22.7 million, or 6.2%, year over year, according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief released Thursday.
tldbox GmbH has announced its successful evaluation as a Registry Service Provider (RSP) under ICANN’s upcoming New Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Program.
Switzerland’s ccTLD .ch will continue to be managed by Switch for five more years from January 2027, the country’s Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) announced last week, with the option of extending for another five years.
The Nigerian Senate, a number of government agencies and industry have all called for Nigerians to increase their use of the country’s ccTLD .ng at the recent Tech Convergence 2.0 event, organised by the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA).
As usual, ICANN’s annual general meeting in Dublin last week saw plenty of resolutions approved including the reappointment of Tripti Sinha as chair and appointment of Sajid Rahman was, somewhat controversially, appointed as Vice Chair; continue operations of the Whois successor the Registration Data Request Service for another two years; approved the New gTLD Program: 2026 Round Applicant Guidebook, three future meetings in Muscat, Seville and Vancouver and more.
Continue reading “ICANN Dublin Approves New gTLD Guidebook, 3 Meeting Locations, RDRS Continuance, Sinha Reappointed Chair, Rahman New Vice-Chair”