.NL Whois Data Now Includes Registrar’s Contact Details For Reporting Abuse

SIDN-logoThe registration, or Whois, data for each .nl domain name now includes contact details for reporting abuse to the registrar, SIDN, the .nl registry has announced. The change came into effect on 10 August

SIDN-logoThe registration, or Whois, data for each .nl domain name now includes contact details for reporting abuse to the registrar, SIDN, the .nl registry has announced. The change came into effect on 10 August.

‘Abuse’ means any form of internet crime. The additional information will soon be available from the Whois on the .nl registry’s website. Easy access to abuse contact details will mean that issues involving the domain name can be dealt with more quickly.

As the operator of one the world’s most secure domains, SIDN notes they attach great importance to fighting abuse, acting against internet crime that uses .nl domains wherever they can. SIDN’s abuse204.nl programme is one example. From August, SIDN will be publishing the email address and phone number that can be used to contact the registrar if you come across an issue linked to a domain name. The intention is to make it easier to report abuse.

Verisign Report Shows Significant Slowing of Domain Registration Growth

Once upon a time not that many years ago, the growth in domain name registrations each year was like growth in the Chinese economy – well over 10%. These days the growth rate overall is nothing to be sneezed. In the year to the end of March, registrations around the world grew by 3.7% (11.8 million) to 330.6 million across all TLDs according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief. It was only in the preceding year, to the end of March 2016, that registrations had grown 11%.

Once upon a time not that many years ago, the growth in domain name registrations each year was like growth in the Chinese economy – well over 10%. These days the growth rate overall is nothing to be sneezed. In the year to the end of March, registrations around the world grew by 3.7% (11.8 million) to 330.6 million across all top level domains (TLDs) according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief. It was only in the preceding year, to the end of March 2016, that registrations had grown 11%.

OK, Verisign add a proviso when looking back on registrations for registrations to the end of March 2016 for the .tk (Tokelau) country code top level domain (ccTLD) with a significant re-estimation downwards of its zone file size. As a result total global domain name registrations were changed from 326.4 million to 318.8 million. However these 10%+ annual registration increases were standard for several years.

The change in of annual registration increases of below 5% though are likely to be standard for some years to come as the significant growth is coming from ccTLDs in developing countries and within new gTLDs, although even here due to some new gTLDs such as .xyz having hugely discounted promotions, renewal rates are very low and even declining. However in total new gTLD registrations have stabilised around the 27 million mark for the last 6 weeks according to nTLDstats.com. As of 31 March new gTLD registrations were near their peak of 29.1 million. They peak at 29.4 million in mid-April.

For the quarter, registrations grew only 0.4% (1.3 million) to 31 March, which indicated an even greater slowdown in registration growth.

The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of approximately 143.6 million domain name registrations in the domain name base in the first quarter of 2017 – 128.4 million for .com and 15.2 million for .net. This represents a 0.8% increase year over year, almost entirely due to increase in .com.

Among ccTLDs, .cn (China) has regained the crown of the largest and now has 21.4 million registrations to be the second largest of all TLDs while .tk has 18.6 million with .de (Germany) next with 16.2 million. Following in the top ten TLDs is .net then .uk (United Kingdom – 10.6m), .org (10.4m), .ru (Russian Federation – 6.4m), .nl (Netherlands – 5.7m) and then the largest of the new gTLDs, .xyz (5.6m).

Growth in ccTLDs was only 0.3% for the quarter, or 408,242 registrations, and 1.7% (2.4 million) for the year. Without including .tk, ccTLD domain name registrations increased approximately 568,242 in the first quarter of 2017, a 0.5 percent increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2016 and ccTLDs increased by approximately 4.6 million domain name registrations, or 3.9 percent, year over year.

At the end of the first quarter there were 294 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 64.7 percent of all ccTLD domain name registrations.

For the new gTLDs registrations totalled 25.4 million as of 31 March, 7.7% of total domain name registrations. The top 10 new gTLDs represented 64.1% of all new gTLD domain name registrations.

Volume 14, Issue 2, of the Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief is available for download from:
http://www.verisign.com/assets/domain-name-report-Q12017.pdf

An archive of recent reports is available from:
http://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/dnib/domain-name-industry-brief-reports/index.xhtml

SIDN Warns Of Marketing Scams to .NL Registrants

SIDN-logoSIDN, the registry for .nl domain names, has warned registrants that they’ve recently received a number of reports about firms approaching .nl registrants and offering them versions of their domain names with other extensions

SIDN-logoSIDN, the registry for .nl domain names, has warned registrants that they’ve recently received a number of reports about firms approaching .nl registrants and offering them versions of their domain names with other extensions.
The scam is not exclusive to .nl and occurs to registrants in many top level domains, and there are occasional warnings from registries of the scam.
In the case of .nl registrants, the scam offers typically involve multi-year contracts and inflated prices. One of the firms doing this has been pretending to be SIDN. SIDN wants to stress they’re not connected with these activities in any way and advise registrants not to accept any such offers.

For any registrant of .nl domain names receiving this kind of offer, SIDN advises to make a note of any names or contact details and to save any emails received. Then they ask recipients to forward everything to Fraudehelpdesk.nl.

DENIC Expands Services Becoming Official Provider Of Data Escrow for ICANN-Accredited Registrars

A number of top level domain registries are looking for more business opportunities. Some such as nic.at have ventured into providing backend registry services for new gTLDs. Others such as SIDN, the .nl registry has expanded by co-creating a DNS billing service in the Netherlands and taking over an e-identity company with 12 million users.

A number of top level domain registries are looking for more business opportunities. Some such as nic.at have ventured into providing backend registry services for new gTLDs. Others such as SIDN, the .nl registry has expanded by co-creating a DNS billing service in the Netherlands and taking over an e-identity company with 12 million users.

And DENIC, the .de country code top level domain manager, has also been expanding. Last month they announced it had won the contract with EURid to provide shared use of its global anycast mesh for the .eu and Cyrillic script .ею (xn--e1a4c) TLDs.

This week DENIC had a further announcement. They are extending their business activities to include a back-up storage service for the business data of ICANN-accredited registrars (Registrar Data Escrow). On 15 March a contract was signed with ICANN that included several unprecedented conditions that are different from any previous agreement. Not only do the applicable law and place of jurisdiction terms allow for non-US legislation and venues, as far as the relationship between registrar and data escrow provider is concerned. But for the first time within the ICANN escrow context, full compliance with the applicable European data protection regulations is achieved.

The accreditation by ICANN as a Third-Party Provider for Registrar Data Escrow (TPP RDE) was obtained by DENIC last year. Now the details of the obligatory tripartite agreement between ICANN, DENIC and registrars as the users of the RDE service could be finalised. The contract stands out from other parties’ escrow agreements with ICANN by not being governed exclusively by Californian law but also allowing German law as the applicable legislation for the contractual relationship between a registrar and DENIC as escrow provider – provided ICANN is not affected. Moreover, the registrar and DENIC may define upon contract conclusion if, in case of dispute, they will seek redress in a German court or a Swiss court of arbitration.

During the recent ICANN meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, the first tripartite agreement was signed by Akram Atallah, President of ICANN’s Global Domains Division (GDD), DENIC COO Andreas Musielak and Marcus Fauré, Managing Director of the German registrar Global Village, on 15 March 2017. Global Village – together with another five registrars – had already used DENIC's Escrow Service in the last few months within the scope of a Friends & Family test scenario. The agreement with ICANN now cleared the way for concluding an official contract.

“Escrow Services is an interesting new business field for us. Providing a back-up service for sensitive data will further enhance our international reputation as a trustworthy partner,” said DENIC COO Andreas Musielak expressing his satisfaction about the latest development.

“Given the legal uncertainty with regard to data transfers to the Unites States, the DENIC Escrow Service is a very attractive option, also and in particular to all registrars based in Europe.”

“In the current tense political climate, protecting the data of European domain holders has become ever more important. I am relieved that, being a contracting partner of DENIC, I will now be able to store the data of my customers in a legally safe place in Europe, without having to entrust them to an enterprise that is competing with my own company,” said Global Village Managing Director Marcus Fauré. “With DENIC, I now have the ideal partner for the technical implementation by my side.”

DENIC’s Board is confident that the ongoing contract negotiations with ICANN for approving DENIC to also provide Registry Data Escrow (RyDE) for the New gTLDs will now come to a close soon, too. New gTLD registry operators are also subject to the obligation to use escrow services.

As a neutral, not-for-profit cooperative, DENIC is neither a registrar nor a gTLD (backend) operator, and thus does not compete with the potential customers of its Escrow Service. 20 years of experience in operating one of the largest TLD zones worldwide (.de) with more than 16 million domains make DENIC one of the leading experts in domain management, at an international level. State-of-the art cryptographic algorithms and multiple redundancies safeguard the secure transmission and storage of all domain registration data. Storage will be exclusively in data centers located in Europe (i.e. in Frankfurt and Amsterdam), in compliance with European data protection regulations. DENIC's certifications according to ISO/IEC 27001:2013 ISMS and ISO 22301:2012 BCM standards are another guarantee for maximum information security and availability.

 

DENIC Doubles Provision Of Secondary Anycast Services Through .EU Contract

At the recent Domain Pulse conference in Vienna, there were discussions on how domain name registration growth rates for ccTLDs has been rather stagnant for a few years. One of the issues raised was what opportunities were there for ccTLD registries to look outside their own market for business opportunities.

At the recent Domain Pulse conference in Vienna, there were discussions on how domain name registration growth rates for ccTLDs has been rather stagnant for a few years. One of the issues raised was what opportunities were there for ccTLD registries to look outside their own market for business opportunities.

SIDN, the .nl registry, has expanded by co-creating a DNS billing service in the Netherlands and taking over an e-identity company with 12 million users. Others, such as the Austrian country code Top Level Domain registry nic.at, have set up as new generic Top Level Domain registries.

And DENIC, the German ccTLD manager, has also been expanding. This week the .de registry announced it has won the contract to provide shared use of its global anycast mesh for the .eu and Cyrillic script .ею (xn--e1a4c) TLDs. DENIC now provides DNS slave services covering some 6.5m domains for seven TLD clients, in addition to running its own .de nameservice for more than 16.1m domains under management (DUM). Providing the service for EURid more than doubles the provision of this service to other TLDs and increases its contribution to the security and stability of the internet as a whole. The provision of the services to EURid is to date DENIC’s largest customer.

The improved network performance achieved by anycast routing eventually benefits every user of the Internet: via reduced processing times of DNS queries, multiplied back-up capacities to deal with load peaks, and enhanced resilience for optimum DDoS mitigation.

Third-party TLD operators running ccTLDs, gTLDs or Brand TLDs can benefit from DENIC’s DNS anycast slave services since 2010, under a cost-sharing scheme, using either the full set of DENIC’s authoritative global name servers, as a primary service, or picking dedicated ones as a supplement to their own network, in order to enlarge its footprint, resilience, and robustness. Growing numbers of customers and DUM also result in economies of scale for all connected TLD users which makes the shared use of DENIC’s network even more attractive.

Next to providing global anycast network presence, DENIC’s DNS slave service includes 24/7 monitoring and support as well as customised web APIs for advanced monitoring and statistics to meet clients’ operational needs.

Presently, the shared global anycast mesh run by DENIC includes 12 locations spread across the EMEA region (Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Moscow, Stockholm, Vienna), Asia Pacific (Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul) and the Americas (Los Angeles, Miami, São Paulo). These locations are pooled in one IPv6 and two IPv4 anycast clouds, respectively.

Sited close to leading Internet exchange points, all network locations use high bandwidths, support IPv6 and are fully DNSSEC-enabled.

 

.CN Regains Top ccTLD Rank As .TK And .NET Shed Registrations, While Global Registrations Hit 329 Million: Verisign

2016 closed with global domain name registrations reaching 329.3 million according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, growing by approximately 2.3 million registrations, or 0.7% over the third quarter of 2016. Registrations grew by 21.0 million, or 6.8%, year over year. The most notable changes over the last 12 months were China’s ccTLD adding over 4 million registrations to become the largest ccTLD again, while .tk and .net shed over 7 million and 500,000 registrations respectively.

2016 closed with global domain name registrations reaching 329.3 million according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief, growing by approximately 2.3 million registrations, or 0.7% over the third quarter of 2016. Registrations grew by 21.0 million, or 6.8%, year over year. The most notable changes over the last 12 months were China’s ccTLD adding over 4 million registrations to become the largest ccTLD again, while .tk and .net shed over 7 million and 500,000 registrations respectively.

Total country code top level domain (ccTLD) domain name registrations were approximately 142.7 million, a 1.8% increase over the third quarter of 2016, and a 3.1% (4.3 million) increase year over year.

Without including .tk which has dropped from 26 million to 18.7 million in the 12 months to the end of 2016, ccTLD domain name registrations increased approximately 2.1 million in the quarter, a 1.7% increase compared to the third quarter of 2016 and ccTLDs increased by approximately 8.0 million domain name registrations, or 6.9%, year over year.

It means China’s ccTLD has now overtaken the free registration model of .tk to become the largest ccTLD and second largest TLD overall, again, positions it last held back in 2009 when it had over 14 million registrations. In the last 12 months .cn has grown by 4.24 million registrations.

At the end of 2016, .com was the largest TLD with 126.9 million registrations, followed by .cn with 21.1 million, .tk (18.7 million), .de (16.1m) and .net (15.3m). The largest of the new gTLDs remains .xyz which had 6.0 million registrations.

The top 10 ccTLDs, as of 31 December were .cn (China), .tk (Tokelau), .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .ru (Russian Federation), .nl (Netherlands), .br (Brazil), .eu (European Union), .au (Australia) and .it (Italy).

There were 293 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 64.7 percent of all ccTLD domain name registrations.

For .com and .net, both operated by Verisign, .com grew from 124 million registrations at the end of 2015 and 115.6 at the end of 2014. However for .net it’s a different story and it has suffered since the introduction of new gTLDs. In 2016 .net bled half million registrations from the 15.8 million one year ago but is still above the 15 million at the end of 2014.

New .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 8.8 million during the fourth quarter of 2016. In the fourth quarter of 2015, new .com and .net domain name registrations totalled 12.2 million.

New generic Top Level Domains (new gTLDs) totalled 25.6 million domain name registrations, which represents 7.8% of total domain name registrations. The top 10 new gTLDs represented 63.% of all new gTLD registrations.

Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load during the fourth quarter of 2016 was 143 billion across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of 398 billion. Quarter over quarter, the daily average increased 11.4 percent and the peak increased by 122.5 percent. Year over year, the daily average query load increased by 16.0 percent and the peak increased 105.1 percent.

 

Dutch Banks And ISPs Lag When Protecting Their .NL Domains With DNSSEC, But Government Makes Great Progress

SIDN-logoThe number of .nl (Netherlands) domain names protected by DNSSEC is approaching half (46%) of all registrations, but there are two sectors in particular that are lagging according to a recent support from the .NL registry SIDN. The banking sector with only 6% and ISPs with 22% of registrations are lagging behind other sectors when it comes to protecting domain names with DNSSEC

SIDN-logoThe number of .nl (Netherlands) domain names protected by DNSSEC is approaching half (46%) of all registrations, but there are two sectors in particular that are lagging according to a recent support from the .NL registry SIDN. The banking sector with only 6% and ISPs with 22% of registrations are lagging behind other sectors when it comes to protecting domain names with DNSSEC.

A previous inventory in 2014 found that financial service providers, listed companies, government organisations and internet service providers were lagging a long way behind other sectors. Since then, the number of signed domain names in all the underperforming sectors has risen, but most remain disappointing compared with the pace-setters. Government organisations form an exception, however: they are doing much better than three years ago, rising from 11% of government websites being secured to 59% today, putting the government third in the sector league table.

Over the last two years, various new safety applications have been rolled out, which piggy-back on the DNSSEC infrastructure. As a result, DNSSEC has gone from being a technology-driven expense to being an enabler for key security applications designed to tackle phishing, spamming, spoofing and other email abuses.

In addition, the obstacles in the way of secure domain name transfers have recently been resolved. SIDN has developed a method that enables registrars all over the world to transfer domain names securely, by following a uniform procedure based on EPP (the Extensible Provisioning Protocol). Last week, the new method was formally adopted as a global standard by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

“Against that backdrop, it’s hard to think of any good reason for not implementing DNSSEC protection,” continues Meijer. “We believe that it’s now up to the big internet service providers to act. It’s really important that they get behind DNSSEC, because the protocol is only effective if ISPs commit to validating domain names’ digital signatures. Late last year, XS4ALL took the plunge and became the first national internet service provider to enable DNSSEC validation.”

For the DNSSEC Inventory 2017, SIDN analysed more than seven thousand domain names in four general sectors: financial services, the public sector, internet and telecom service providers, and listed companies. The analysis made use of the DNSSEC Portfolio Checker developed by SIDN labs.

DNSSEC involves the cryptographic protection of domain name information. It makes the internet’s ‘signpost system’ more secure and more reliable. If a domain name is secured with DNSSEC, people who want to visit the associated website are protected against being misdirected to a fraudster’s IP address. Without DNSSEC, there’s a risk that, despite entering the right domain name, people will end up on a fake site set up to trick them. DNSSEC also forms the basis for new applications, such as systems for making e-mail safer and easily sharing cryptographic keys for securing internet communications.

Global Domain Registrations Grow 7.9 Million In Q2 Driven By New gTLD Growth

There were 334.6 million domain names registered around the world as of 30 June, an increase of 7.9 million, or 2.4 percent, over the previous quarter with three quarters (74.7%) of the growth coming from registrations in new gTLDs, according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief.

There were 334.6 million domain names registered around the world as of 30 June, an increase of 7.9 million, or 2.4 percent, over the previous quarter with three quarters (74.7%) of the growth coming from registrations in new generic Top Level Domains, according to the latest Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief.Among the new gTLDs, there were 22 million domain names registered as of 30 June compared to 16.1 million as of 31 March, an increase of 5.9 million for the quarter. Domain registrations in new gTLDs account for 6.6 percent of all domain registrations compared to 4.9 percent at the end of the previous quarter and two percent a year ago.The ten largest TLDs were .com, .tk, .cn, .de, .net, .org, .uk, .xyz, .ru and .nl. The biggest change for the quarter was .xyz’s inclusion in the top ten, the largest of the new gTLDs and the first of the new gTLDs to break into the top ten. The largest TLD of them all, .com, now has 127.5 million registrations, an increase of 900,000 registrations for the quarter and 9 million for the year, while .net has 15.8 million dropping around 100,000 from the previous quarter, but overall up 800,000 registrations in the past 12 months.Total ccTLD domain name registrations were approximately 149.9 million in the first quarter of 2016, with an increase of 1.4 million domain name registrations, or a 1.0 percent increase compared to the first quarter of 2016. ccTLDs increased by approximately 11.7 million domain name registrations, or 8.5 percent, year over year. Without including .tk, ccTLD domain name registration growth quarter-over-quarter was 1.2 percent and growth year-over-year was 10.7 percent.During the second quarter of 2016, Verisign’s average daily Domain Name System (DNS) query load was approximately 130 billion queries per day across all TLDs operated by Verisign, with a peak of nearly 179 billion queries. Quarter over quarter, the daily average query load increased 4.9 percent and the peak decreased by 5.0 percent. Year over year, the daily average query load increased by 17.0 percent, and the peak decreased by 1.5 percent.

Domains Reach 326 Million With New gTLDs Now 5 Percent Of All Registrations

There were 326.4 million domain names registered across all top level domains around the world at the end of the first quarter 2016, an increase of approximately 12 million domain names, or 3.8 percent over the fourth quarter of 2015, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by Verisign. Registrations have grown by 32.4 million, or 11 percent, year over year.

There were 326.4 million domain names registered across all top level domains (TLDs) around the world at the end of the first quarter 2016, an increase of approximately 12 million domain names, or 3.8 percent over the fourth quarter of 2015, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief published by Verisign. Registrations have grown by 32.4 million, or 11 percent, year over year.As of 31 March, new gTLD registrations totalled 16.1 million, which represented 4.9 percent of total domain name registrations. The top 10 new gTLDs represented over half (54.8%) of all new gTLD domain name registrations. The largest of the new gTLDs were .xyz and .top, which accounted for 16.5 and 11.1 percent of all new gTLD registrations respectively.Total country code TLD (ccTLD) registrations were 148.2 million domain names, a 2.6 percent increase quarter over quarter, and an 8.2 percent increase year over year. The top 10 ccTLDs as of 31 March were .tk (Tokelau), .cn (China), .de (Germany), .uk (United Kingdom), .ru (Russian Federation), .nl (Netherlands), .eu (European Union), .br (Brazil), .au (Australia) and .fr (France).The .com and .net TLDs experienced aggregate growth, reaching a combined total of approximately 142.5 million domain names in the domain name base in the first quarter of 2016. This represents a 7.1 percent increase year over year. The base of registered names in .com equalled 126.6 million names, while .net equalled 15.9 million names, the latter figure having being static for around three years.New .com and .net registrations totalled 10 million during the first quarter of 2016. In the first quarter of 2015, new .com and .net registrations totalled 8.7 million.There has also been a large jump in the growth of .com and .net domain names redirecting to popular global social media and e-commerce sites compared to Q1 2015. Weibo had the largest growth of 49 percent followed by LinkedIn (35%), Etsy (30%), Facebook (27%), Amazon.com (25%) and Twitter (23%). Verisign don’t give total numbers and for most at least it is likely to be growth from a comparatively small base.Combining gTLDs and ccTLDs, the largest by zone size were .com, .tk, .cn, .de, .net, .org, .uk, .ru, .nl and .info. There were 291 global ccTLD extensions delegated in the root, including Internationalised Domain Names (IDN), with the top 10 ccTLDs composing 67.4 percent of all ccTLD registrations.Regarding .tk, Verisign quotes from a Freenom news release that the Tokelauan ccTLD is a free ccTLD that provides free domain names to individuals and businesses. Revenue is generated by monetising expired domain names. Domain names no longer in use by the registrant or expired are taken back by the registry and the residual traffic is sold to advertising networks. As such, there are no deleted .tk domain names.It also means that while .tk is the largest ccTLD, it’s numbers are very misleading when it comes to actual usage and demand.

Norid and SIDN End .BV Plans After Norwegian Government Intervention

Norid UNINETT logoPlans by the Dutch ccTLD registry, SIDN, to sell .bv domain names in the Netherlands, have ended after the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications advised that the required dispensation would not be granted

Norid UNINETT logoPlans by the Dutch ccTLD registry, SIDN, to sell .bv domain names in the Netherlands, have ended after the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications advised that the required dispensation would not be granted.

The .bv (Bouvet Island) ccTLD has been unused since its creation in 1997. Norid has carefully considered possible ways to develop and use this resource, but the conclusion has been that there are no sustainable ways to utilise .bv for Norwegian users directly. However, the fact that the Bouvet Island is uninhabited, and that .bv thus has no local Internet community, grants the freedom to look into new and innovative ways to develop the ccTLD.

SIDN_logo_smallBV is short for “Besloten vennootschap met beperkte aansprakelijkheid” and in the Netherlands and Belgium is the most common form of a limited liability company, or in English ‘Ltd’ or ‘Inc’.

The idea was for the .bv domain to operate as a platform for sharing validated business data. Enterprises and consumers would be able to visit the platform before buying from or doing business with an unfamiliar company.

“SIDN runs one of the world’s largest top-level domains. They are highly recognized internationally for their professional operations. A collaboration would have given the opportunity for valuable exchange of that knowledge and experience”, commented Norid’s General Manager, Hilde Thunem. The idea of a platform for validated business data will now be developed within the .nl domain instead. “Successful implementation of .bv would have had added value for the internet community, both in the Netherlands and in Norway,” said Roelof Meijer, SIDN’s CEO. “Our intention is to press ahead with the concept devised for .bv, but it will now be marketed under the .nl banner.”

From Norid’s point of view they were disappointed saying in a statement:
“We comply with the decision made by the ministry, and have withdrawn the application for dispensation,” said Norid’s General Manager, Hilde Thunem.

“From Norid’s perspective, we regret that we don’t get the opportunity to use this domain resource. SIDN runs one of the world’s largest top-level domains, and they are highly recognised internationally for their professional operations. A collaboration would have given the opportunity for valuable exchange of knowledge and experience that would have benefitted the Norwegian community.”