At Least 3 Companies Submit Bids To Operate French and Territorial ccTLDs
At least three and up to six companies have submitted bids to operate the .FR (France) ccTLD and the ten French territory ccTLDs currently managed by AFNIC.
Bids were required to be submitted to the French Ministry of Industry by Friday for the 11 ccTLDs, and so far the current ccTLD manager AFNIC, along with l’Office d’enregistrement des extensions Internet françaises (“Office For The Registration Of French Internet Extensions” – a subsidiary of the Luxembourg-based OpenRegistry) and FRNIC have all publicly stated they have applied.
In the bid by the current registry operator, AFNIC have said they have significant industry support with more than 660 organisations and individuals expressing support for them to retain the operation of the registry.
Another of the applicants, FRNIC, a collaboration between FREE Foundation and the French registrar StartingDot, say they will invest all the profits of the organisation into developing the internet including the establishment of a foundation with €2.5 million over five years to be led by a scientific committee and to double the number of registered domain names between 2012 and 2017.
StartingDot has also applied to ICANN for five new gTLDs they describe as being “dedicated to businesses in many important sectors so that they may optimise their visibility and align their internet address with the name of their business.”
But the number of .FR domain names has been growing rapidly since registration rules were liberalised, leading to the ccTLD being one of the fastest growing in recent years, Matthieu Weill, AFNIC Director General, told Les Echos.
The 11 ccTLD registries for which tenders have been requested by the French Ministry of Industry are:
- .FR for France;
- .BL for Saint-Barthélemy;
- .GF for French Guiana;
- .GP for Guadeloupe;
- .MF for Saint-Martin;
- .MQ for Martinique;
- .PM for Saint-Pierre and Miquelon;
- .RE for Reunion Island
- .TF for the French Southern and Antarctic Territories;
- .WF for Wallis and Futuna;
- .YT for Mayotte.
.SECURE Proposal For A gTLD
One application for a new generic Top Level Domain will have security at the forefront. The proposal for a .SECURE gTLD will require “fully encrypted HTTPS sessions and a comprehensive vetting process for websites and their operators,” according to Dark Reading. The proposal has gained investments of $9 million.
“Effortless security’ is our tagline,” Alex Stamos, CTO at Artemis, told Dark Reading. “Right now, when you go to .com, you have to look for five different visual clues to figure out what’s going on” security-wise, Stamos says. “If you type .secure, you’re telling the server or organization that you want to communicate with that you want to be safe and expect them to be as safe as possible. All of that security stuff is taken care of for you.”
Stamos went on to say he expects financial institutions and other security-sensitive businesses to adopt the new domain for their pages that handle transactions, for example, or sensitive data. “We’re not trying to tell people to throw away your .com. You can create a namespace where you can do more secure things, so if you are a bank that runs hundreds of websites and have some website for users who do billion-dollar transactions,” that site could go to the .SECURE domain, he says.
Explaining the rationale for the .SECURE proposal, Stamos said “We saw the Internet was in a period of malleability: DNSSEC is being deployed, IPv6 transition is [under way], and in the middle of all of that, this TLD [program] is happening. The Internet is now wet concrete again and we want to make a positive impact.”
Potential registrants will be required to go through a “rigorous screening to verify their identity” reports Ars Technica. As well as meeting the abovementioned security requirements, those wanting to use .SECURE will need to provide “physical addresses, trademark registrations, articles of incorporation, and other legal documents” which would be reviewed by human beings. “Upon approval, applicants would receive two-factor authentication hardware to register online.”
For now there is work underway including Artemis working “with other as-yet unnamed Internet companies under the auspices of the Domain Policy Working Group, which is creating a Domain Policy Framework specification that spells out how browsers and mail servers would implement .secure’s security functions, for instance. The final spec will be submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),” Dark Reading noted.
Demand Media Invests $18m In Its Pursuit of gTLDs
Demand Media invested $18 million in pursuit of their generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) initiative in April, which it believes represents a complementary strategic growth opportunity for its registrar services. What the investment was in, the company has not said.
The announcement came in their 2012 first quarter results, announced this week, that also included results for their registrar services. Registrar revenue grew 17 per cent year-over-year and three per cent compared to the fourth quarter of 2011 while the number of registered domains grew by a net 593,000 compared to 442,000 in the first quarter of 2011, due to growth from new partners and organic growth from resellers.
“Driven by continued growth across our businesses, our first quarter revenue exceeded our seasonally strong Q4 2011 results,” said Richard Rosenblatt, Chairman and CEO of Demand Media. “We are pleased with our first quarter results and remain focused on investing in our long-term growth initiatives, including enhancing the quality of our Owned & Operated properties, expanding our content distribution channels and partnerships, and pursuing new generic Top Level Domain opportunities.”
SIDN appointed to handle technical realisation of .amsterdam
SIDN,the company behind .NL extension,announced that Publishing house HUB Uitgevers has appointed them to handle technical realisation of the new top-level domain .amsterdam.
According to puntamsterdam.nl,the new top-level internet domain name will come online in 2013.Pre-registration is possible from 7 May,2012 at puntamsterdam.nl and dotamsterdam.nl
“Naturally we are very pleased that Amsterdam and HUB have chosen SIDN to handle the technical realisation of .amsterdam. With nearly five million registered .nl domain names, we have vast experience with all aspects of domain name registration. We expect new TLDs such as .amsterdam to change the internet landscape. Clearly, therefore, we want to be involved in this development,” said SIDN’s CEO,Roelof Meijer .
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. 2013 Returns to Las Vegas
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. 2013 conference will be held in Las Vegas.This is the 7th time the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference is being held in Las Vegas. Even though the conference will be held again in Las Vegas,the venue is different.The conference will be held at the 5 Star Bellagio Hotel.
Rick Schwarz announced that the conference starts ” right after the Memorial Day Weekend next year”.
This year’s T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference is being held in October at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Fort Lauderdale.The price of attending the show goes from $1295 to $1595 and starting July 1,the price of attending the show will be $1795 .
You can register here for T.R.A.F.F.I.C 2012 .
Neustar announced winner of the first quarter “Best of .Biz” awards
Neustar announced recently the winner of the first quarter “Best of .Biz” awards.And the winner is Austin SEO Company,ArteWorks SEO. You can read the press release after the jump :
“Neustar, Inc., a trusted, neutral provider of real-time information and analysis to the Internet, telecommunications, entertainment, advertising and marketing industries, announced today that Austin SEO company, ArteWorks SEO, is the winner of the first quarter “Best of .Biz” award.
Founded by CEO Matt Foster as a way to fund his law degree, ArteWorks SEO started as an Internet marketing and Web design firm in 1995, but soon shifted direction when search engine optimization (SEO) gained steam in the late 1990’s. Mr. Foster saw a market need for an SEO company that put a premium on integrity and delivered on its promises. With a focus on the future—its own and the SEO industry’s—Mr. Foster used a common sense strategy that soon had his clients at the top of every search ranking list. Recognized by TopSEOs.com as an award-winning leader in search engine optimization, ArteWorks SEO is known for achieving long-term results by keeping an eye on what’s next
in search marketing.
“Our .biz domain shows customers that we mean business,” said Foster. “My.biz allows us flexibility in choosing a domain name that reflects who we are, is widely recognized, and is ranked well on the search engines. We’ve experienced tremendous success and growth using the .biz domain extension.”
Over the last 10 years, Neustar has built .biz into a quality domain space, which helps small to medium-sized businesses grow through better domain names and branding. As part of the anniversary celebration, Neustar will recognize 10 new small businesses each quarter of 2012 and let the jury of
their business colleagues and peers vote on the quarterly winner.”