Not many top-level domain registries publish surveys on how their domain names are being used, but EURid this week did with some interesting findings, like just over half (51.84%) of the 150,000 .eu domain names survey have websites with rich content, 81% of domains with MX records are active and 82.5% are connected to a web server.
The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020, but the 11 month transition period meant the UK was still bound by the EU’s rules. At the end of the transition period it was known businesses and citizens of the UK would lose the right to register .EU domain names. What very few realised was that due to the terms and conditions for .fr, they would lose the right to register and hold .fr domain names as well.
London’s Sunday Telegraph reported of an insurrection brewing at Nominet, the .uk registry, with a former chair of the BBC “backing a bid to oust nearly half of the board of Nominet … amid anger over rising pay and falling contributions to good causes.”
The self-declared African country of Somaliland, internationally considered to be part of Somalia, has sent a request to Sierra Leone asking for it to consider sharing their ccTLD, .sl, according to a report in The Somaliland Chronicle.
The move by the pro-Brexit campaign group Leave.EU to change their domain name contact details to an Irish address has been met with condemnation by an Irish politician who has described the group as an “odious organisation … with a dubious reputation”.
INRegistry is offering free .in Internationalised Domain Names in any of the 22 official Indian languages whenever a .in domain name is registered. Registrants will also get a free email address in the local language.
The registry fee for .it domain names is dropping by a quarter, from €4 to €3, for 6 months Registro.it announced in late December.
It is now possible to register Danish domain names with the German character ẞ – also called scharfes S or double-s.
Switzerland’s Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) has extended its 2016 contract with SWITCH for five more years for management of the .ch ccTLD. The new contract, signed on 10 December 2020, includes additional services to further strengthen the .ch domain’s security and intensify the fight against cybercrime. It will come into force on 1 January 2022. SWITCH has managed .ch on the Swiss Confederation’s behalf since 2003.
It has taken 32 years since the first .ca domain was registered, and 20 years to the day since ICANN delegated the .ca domain registry to CIRA, but Tuesday the organisation announced there are now more than 3 million .ca domains under management.