73,000 . BY Domain Name Registrations most active foreign buyers are Germany, USA & Russia
MINSK, 18 December (BelTA) – About 73,000 domain names have been registered in the national zone .by, BelTA learned from Mr Sergei Povalishev, Head of the Hosting and Domain Registration Department of the Belarusian software development company Reliable Software.
About 56% of the domain names have been registered by legal persons and self-employed businessmen. Natural persons own 44% of the domain names. The company expects the number of registered domain names to exceed 100,000 in the .by zone in spring 2013.
About 89% of the names in the .by zone have been registered by Belarusian entities. The most active foreign buyers are representatives of Germany, the USA, and Russia.
About 43% of the domain names in the .by zone were registered in 2012. About 19% of the domain names have existed since 2011 and 14% since 2010. “We have seen a surge in the number of registered domain names this year. It can be attributed to the simpler procedures required to register domain names since the mandatory verification by the Operations and Analysis Center under the President of Belarus was cancelled in March 2012,” explained Sergei Povalishev. Now the procedure to register domain names in the .by zone is no different from those used for other zones.
All the possible two-letter names have been registered in the .by zone. But two-character names (a combination of letters and digits, for instance) are still open, with enthusiasts registering them fast. In accordance with the present instruction no one-letter domain names can be registered. If the instruction is amended, it will be necessary to put up such names for an auction or to introduce special requirements for registering such names, stressed the executive.
In line with the new rules expired domain names are not released but are put up for a charity auction. The owner of the domain name has 30 days to prolong the registration. If the owner fails to do so, the domain name is sold via auction. “Cyber squatters used to take over the most interesting names, which were released, within seconds. Auctions are held to prevent it,” noted the source. Four stages of charity auctions have been held already. About Br600 million has been earned and transferred to accounts of children’s asylums. The next auction to sell expired domain names will be held in January 2013.
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