[news release] The .CO.NL Grandfather phase opened successfully yesterday at 10:00 am GMT and the first day of registrations has shown some great interest in the new extension. The numerous official registrars that partner with the Operator have already submitted a high number of requests and the numbers will increase in the coming days.

Sander Scholten, .CO.NL General Manager, explains “The first day of the Grandfather phase has been a real success for us and we received a great amount of requests from our Registrars Partners. As this is just the Grandfather phase, we expect orders to grow even more in the coming days and months. As the success grows we expect many other registrar partners to sign-up and start offering the co.nl to their customer.” Conditions to become a .CO.NL Partner as well as a full list of Registrars already offering .CO.NL domains is available at domain.co.nl/en/registrars.html

“The fact that more than 40 Registrars among the biggest in the world have already submitted applications for major brand names  shows steady interest in the co.nl opportunity” concludes Scholten. Indeed, the CO.NL extension, offers new opportunities for companies and individuals to get larger visibility and stronger international impact, while keeping a Dutch flavour. Open to anyone, with no requirement of local presence or tie with the Netherlands, a CO.NL Domain is also a great opportunity to increase traffic to a site by customers from countries like the United Kingdom, Japan or Israel who are already used to domains bearing the “.co.” suffix.

The Grandfather period will end on Thursday January 15th 2009 at 10:00 am GMT and is designed to allow holders of one or more “.NL” domain name(s) to secure its identical form with a “.CO.NL” ending.

The second Sunrise phase will then allow Registered Trademarks to be secured in CO.NL. It will start on Tuesday February 10th 2009 at 10:00 am GMT and end on the 26th at 10:00 am GMT. This phase will provide applicants holding a registered trademark in any country with the opportunity to register their brands as CO.NL names before the system is open to the general public

The Landrush Period will be open to anyone without requirements of prior rights and allow customers to get their CO.NL domains sooner than in the general opening. It is also a great opportunity to get generic names before others want to. It will last from Tuesday March 17th 2009 at 2:00 pm GMT until Tuesday March 31st 2009 at 2:00 pm GMT

Finally, the Go Live period will open on Wednesday the 15th of April 2009 at 2:00 pm GMT. Application requests can be made by the general public without any restriction or priority rights, and will be accepted on a first come, first served basis.

If you are interested in allowing your clients to benefit from the .CO.NL extension right away, please contact us at registrar@domain.co.nl.

For more information on .CO.NL, visit the official website:  domain.co.nl/en/welcome.html

About the operator

The CO.NL Operator was established in 2007 to manage the registration of domains with the .CO.NL ending. The organization operates under the national TLD of Dutch registry SIDN but has no further ties to the foundation. The .CO.NL is directly operated from Amsterdam with the technical back-end of EuroDNS SA, a global Registrar of Internet Domain names.

To register your CO.NL domain name, check out Europe Registry here.