It may be small, but .CAT reached the 50,000 active registrations on 19 May after five years of being live.
.CAT is unique among Top Level Domains in that it represents a cultural and linguistic community, this being the Catalan community, and all websites must be posted in the Catalan language. The language is natively spoken in parts of Spain and France, as well as the Italian island of Sardinia.
The Catalan community had been reluctant to use country code TLDs in their countries and so often sought alternatives. One example was the website for the city of Girona in Catalonia, which preferred to use a .GI ccTLD (ajuntament.gi – the word “ajuntament” means both “city council” and “town hall”) says Wikipedia. .GI is the ccTLD for Gibraltar and Gironaâs local council preferred the .GI domain instead of the corresponding .ES domain to which it was entitled to as a Spanish local authority.
While 50,000 registrations is not a big deal for most TLDs, the .CAT registry considers it is important to âICANN, new actors on the Internet governance, and the DNS community in generalâ writes Nacho Amadoz, Chair of the European Cultural and Linguistic Internet Domains, on Circle ID.
The TLD has been successful in promoting an identity for the Catalan community and has had consistent strong growth. As well there has been a low level of controversy that Amadoz says means the TLD has gained praise from its community and trademark holders.