.SE (The Internet Infrastructure Foundation) has been selected to be the registry operator for .nu, the ccTLD for the Pacific Island of Niue, in a contract for 15 years.
Niue is a small island in the Pacific, covering a land mass of 260 square kilometres, 1.5 times the size of Washington DC, and located in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Tonga, and with a population of around 1300. It is 2400km north east of New Zealand.
WorldNames, Inc., the current registry operator and manager for the .nu top level domain since 1998, has selected .SE to operate .nu domain’s registry services, including administration and technical operations. The change will not affect holders of .nu domains and will see WorldNames focus on growing its registrar business.
Under the new arrangements, .SE will operate .nu domainâs registry services, including administration and technical operations. .SE say they will ensure a high level of operational security for .nu, offering domain holders more security by having greater redundancy, more slave servers and offering IPV6 and DNSSEC.
To provide both registrars and end customers with simpler management of domains, WorldNames expects .SE to implement end-user friendly policies that will simplify and speed up the process of transferring ownership of a domain name. .SE will also implement procedures to simplify Registrar-to-Registrar transfers.
Interestingly the majority of .nu registrants are based in Sweden, largely due to ânuâ in Swedish meaning ânowâ and some years ago there was a promotion to encourage Swedish business to use .nu. It also has the same meaning in Dutch and Danish.
In 2011, 68 percent of .nu domains were held by domain owners in Sweden, 19 percent in the Netherlands, 5 percent in Denmark, 2 percent in Norway and 6 percent in other countries. The increase in the number of domains in Sweden between 2012 and 2011 was 1 percent, but rose 17 percent in the Netherlands.
For more information on the changes, see the .se announcement at:
https://www.iis.se/english/news/se-nu-faq/