Australia’s country code (ccTLD) will allow “direct” registrations in the .au ccTLD in the future. Following on from a consultation process last year, the board of auDA has announced their intention to update the domain registration policy to allow people and organisations to register .au domain names. Up until now you could register under .com.au, but not directly under .au.
So while now you can register yourcompany.com.au, in the future you’ll be able to get yourcompany.au.
They haven’t announced a timeline for the change to the policy nor have they finalised details of how they will handle existing domain registrations. Other domain name registries who have changed their policies in recent years to allow for direct registrations such as Nominet and New Zealand’s ccTLD both introduced processes to give registrants of existing domains a right of refusal on the matching direct registration.
So, for example, if you had yourcompany.co.nz then you had rights to register yourcompany.nz before anyone else.
Michele,
It’s not all plain sailing here in the land of Oz (when it comes to direct registrations).
Lots of people unhappy with the lack of consultation. Also with how implementation may be designed.
It’s basically a carbon copy of what happened with Nominet and their initial direct registration proposals for the .uk space. How many versions were proposed before acceptance was gained there?
We are at the beginning of the process. 😉
Ned
P.S. Met you at NamesCon – and in the airport at Las Vegas on the way home.
Ned
Thanks for the comment.
The devil is in the details with these kind of policy changes.
Some of the original Nominet proposals were a little “different” and the grandfather period for existing registrations was, in my opinion, way too long.
However comparing the Australian ccTLD, which is quite restrictive, to the UK’s much more open one is problematic.
Michele
I actually don’t think 5 years is too long as you put it. Most people don’t keep up with domain news so that actually might not be enough time.
The real questions I have is… Why haven’t these ccTLD registries allowed direct registrations to begin with? They could have just done what .IN done. Allowed both registrations in .IN and .CO.IN but that is a bit confusing.
Think of thousands of hours people would have saved from just typing in “.UK” or “.NZ” and in this case “.AU”. At least you get a good .US and .IE domain. What do you think Michele? 🙂