News & events

05/08/08

Belgian company Combell launches preregistrations for personalized domain extensions

Combell, Belgium’s largest independent web hosting company, is the first company in the world to offer the possibility to preregister a personalized domain extension. This will make it possible for companies, municipalities and other organisations to register their own extension, like e.g. .ghent or .google. By offering this possibility, Combell acts on a recent decision of ICANN (the institution that manages the DNS system worldwide) to relax the rules relating to domain names. This decision would allow organisations to register their own domain extension and exploit it.

.com, the first domain extension in the world, made its appearance in 1985. The first .nl domain name was cwi.nl and was registered in 1986. The first Belgian domain name appeared in 1989. Besides traditional domain names (.com, .net and .org) and national domain names (.lu, .nl, .be, .de, etc.), other extensions, like .biz or .info, are created on a regular basis. After years of consultation, those new extensions have been approved by ICANN, the institution that manages the DNS system and that makes sure that domain names are reachable from any computer. The .sex or .porno domain names have been the subject of debate for years on end, but such requests have always been rejected.

In June 2008, it was decided at the ICANN Meeting in Paris to relax the rules pertaining to personalized domain extensions. This means that any and all will have the opportunity to request their own extension. This way, the Jones family could own .jones domain names and the city of Ghent could attribute domain names ending in .ghent to its merchants and inhabitants.

Some already started to daydream. In answer to the request of Mark Demesmaeker, the Flemish Minister-President Kris Peeters replied that the Flemish Government would definitely consider requesting a .vla extension. The municipality of The Hague already allocated the necessary budget and cannot wait to register .denhaag or .thehague. Paris also envisages registering .paris and New York is dreaming of a .nyc. “We are convinced that many companies are interested in personalized domain names, but obviously, they will probably not announce this publicly. Since we regularly get requests from customers, we decided to offer the possibility to preregister those personalized domain extensions”, says Tom de Bast, Business Developer at Combell, Belgium's largest independent hosting company.

According to de Bast, the submission procedure will take place in two phases. “First, brand owners, like companies and municipalities for instance, will have the opportunity to register their extension. Subsequently, a landrush will follow, during which everybody will be free to give it a shot”. As a matter of fact, there is a possibility to earn this investment back: if you own your own extension, you can indeed sell domain names with that extension at a price that you yourself are at liberty to determine. “We are mostly thinking of municipalities that, on the one hand, would like to register domain names for themselves (like www.tourism.ghent or www.police.ghent) and, on the other hand, could resell domain names to inhabitants or merchants. There are also numerous opportunities for companies. They could allocate a separate domain name to all of their local branch offices such as www.rotterdam.footlocker or www.antwerp.scapa. Those who are able to get hold of a nice extension like .porno, .movies or .web can of course start dreaming about living the millionaire life”.

“Anyone can submit a preregistration on Combell’s website. This preregistration is entirely free of charge and without further obligation. After this preregistration, you will be kept updated via e-mail. As soon as a new development unfolds, Combell will report it to you. For we indeed follow these interesting developments closely”.

About Combell

Combell is Belgium’s largest independent hosting company. The company provides many Internet services, such as domain names, e-mail hosting, shared hosting, dedicated servers, virtual servers, fax services, online backup services, co-location and SharePoint hosting. Since its foundation in 1999, we manage about 60,000 domain names, 20,000 websites and 800 servers for about 25,000 customers, ranging from individuals to multinationals. These customers include KBC, eBay, Roularta, IKEA, Q8, Hubo, Bikkembergs, Pizza Hut, Sodexho, etc.

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