The boom in COVID-19 pandemic domain name registrations for .ie has continued into the first half of 2021, with the first half of 2021 being the best half year on record for the Irish ccTLD.
Ireland’s ccTLD became a little bit Canadian this week as the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) now provides backend registry services to .IE, the manager of… .ie… through its CIRA Registry Platform.
The .ie registry is celebrating 20 years in business with a rebrand and a €20,000 giveaway to registrants.
Nic.at’s sister company ipcom has signed up another partner to their RcodeZero DNS anycast network, taking the total number of top-level domains using the service to at least 22. Last week the Austrian ccTLD registry announced DNS Belgium had signed an agreement that will see their 1.6 million .be, .vlaanderen and .brussels domain names hosted on the Austrian company’s RcodeZero DNS anycast network.
IE Domain Registry’s SME Digital Health Index, published this week, found 2 of the biggest barriers to SMEs doing more online are a lack of time (with 24% reporting as a barrier) and a lack of the technical skills (11%) perceived as necessary to build a website, integrate e-commerce, or make use of productivity or analytics software. A quarter (25%) say that they are ‘doing all they can’ online—even though only 3 in 10 SMEs can take sales orders through their website. Continue reading IEDR Report Highlights Barriers to Irish SMEs Getting Online
Ireland’s ccTLD hit the quarter million domain name registrations mark last week as .ie has been on a mini boom since a relaxation in eligibility rules in March. Today there are 254,400 .ie domain names registered, and 34,000 have been registered this year. Continue reading .IE On A Roll As It Hits Quarter Million Domains
Registrations for Ireland’s ccTLD, .ie, surged 39% for the year to the end of June, taking total registrations to 252,222 in a record-breaking first 6 months of 2018. As of 3 August there were 253,782 registrations. The surge came on the back of a liberalising of eligibility rules that came into effect on 21 March. Continue reading .IE Registrations Surge on Back of Liberalised Eligibility With Calls To Reduce Registry Fee
The Irish ccTLD .ie has some of the more restrictive eligibility rules in Europe, and hence has one of the lowest numbers of domains under management per capita. A slight relaxation of the rules, which will see applicants not having to show a “claim to the name” from March 2018, may change this. Slightly.
Currently, along with a “claim to the name”, .ie domain name registrants need to show they have a “connection to the island of Ireland” and to prove their identity. The changes come about following a consultation where IEDR put the change out to consultation, with the feedback being supportive.
IEDR, which is the manager of Ireland’s country code top level domain, says there are number of reasons why the rules are changing. They say they want to:
What won’t be changing is that registrants will need to have legitimate connections with the island of Ireland, either the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland, and each application for registration will be manually verified.
The change in policy follows the 10-step IE Policy Development Process with the multi-stakeholder Policy Advisory Committee formally recommended the introduction of this change to the IEDR Board of Directors, which approved the change in November 2017.
More information on the change to eligibility for .ie domain names can be found at:
https://www.iedr.ie/liberalisation/
Irelandâs ccTLD manager, IE Domain Registration (IEDR), has commenced a public consultation to look at liberalising .ie registration policies.
Irelandâs country code top level domain has some of the more restrictive eligibility policies with individuals or businesses having to prove they have a valid claim to the desired name and a real, tangible connection to the island of Ireland.
As a result, .ie has one of the lowest rates of domain name registration in Europe. Despite strong growth at home, Ireland ranks 18th out of 22 European countries for the number of country domain names per 1,000 people, with 49. Ireland ranks ahead of countries with larger populations, like France (46 country domains per 1,000 people) and Spain (40), but is significantly behind others of similar size, like Denmark (234) and Norway (141).
But itâs not that there isnât growth in .ie. According to the latest dot ie Domain Profile Report, which analyses the make-up and geographical spread of .ie domain registrations, there were 230,611 .ie domains in the database as of 30 June 2017. In the first half-year period of 2017, there were 20,255 new .ie registrations, up 11 percent on the same period last year.
The IEDR proposal is to retain the requirement for registrants to prove their connection to Ireland, but drop the need to prove a valid claim to the name. If the policy change is approved, any individual or business with a provable connection to Ireland will be able to register a .ie domain name on a first-come, first-served basis.
By removing this administrative requirement registering a .ie address will be easier and faster, and will further open up the .ie domain namespace to citizens, clubs, communities and businesses.
âBy dropping the âclaim to a nameâ requirement but retaining the connection to Ireland, we are removing a hurdle that slows down some registrants from getting started with a .ie address,â said David Curtin, Chief Executive of IEDR. âOur liberalisation proposal will make registering a .ie domain more straightforward for both individuals and businesses.
âOne of .ieâs greatest values is that it is âidentifiably Irishâ. A business with a .ie address is immediately authentic, trustworthy and familiar. For that reason, the requirement to prove a connection to the island of Ireland will not be going away.
âThe policy change has already been approved-in-principle by IEDRâs Policy Advisory Committee (PAC) and other key .ie domain stakeholders, and by the IEDR Board of Directors. Subject to final consensus following this public consultation, it is envisaged that the policy change will come into force in early 2018.
âWe are pleased to be opening up this liberalisation process to the public and look forward to receiving submissions by the end of September. The policy development process for the .ie namespace benefits from this transparent, multi-stakeholder approach to building consensus for policy changes.â
The consultation will run until 30 September.
For more details on the public consultation, see https://www.iedr.ie/liberalisation and see https://www.iedr.ie/public-consultation.
It will be possible to register Irish geographic names as part of .ie domain names from 20 December the Irish registry, IE Domain Registrations, has announced.
So it will now be possible for businesses or community groups that can show a connection to Ireland to register domains that contain their geographic location.
Any town, village, city or townland can be applied for. In the past, these domains were only available to Local Authorities, or anyone who got special permission from them. While most geographic names will have been registered, options will exist for potential registrants to use the placename only as part of a longer name, for example, HowthRugbyClub.ie.
There are currently 222,200 .ie domain names registered, so there are plenty of options to choose from.
To show a connection to Ireland, registrants will need to show they are one of the following:
Then to register a .ie domain name, registrants will need to show a valid reason for registering the domain, known as the âclaim to the domain.â
If the domain applied for matches a registered business, company or trademark name, registrants need to include the relevant number with their application. To register a domain for any other reason, registrants will need to include a few short sentences with their application explaining why they want this domain and what it will be used for.
In other Irish domain name news, the struggling .irish new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) has been sold to Donuts. The gTLD hit General Availability in June 2015 and hit a peak of 2,458 registrations in September 2016 before losing around one in 8 registrations (almost 300) in less than a month and has sit at around the 2,160 registrations mark since.
Donuts have been on the prowl for new gTLDs for a few months now and the addition of .irish takes them to 198 new gTLDs they operate with 1.877 million domains under management.
While there are restrictions on .ie, there are no such restrictions on .irish with the gTLD being promoted as a means for the Irish diaspora expressing their Irish identity from anywhere in the world.