October 10, 2003 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Global Name Registry (GNR), the ICANN-licensed operator of the .name top level domain (TLD), announced Thursday that .name will open its second level domain space for the first time on January 14, 2004 at 11:30am Eastern Standard time.
The GNR currently offers only third level personal domain name registration, separating names by two dots. For example, www.joe.smith.name. Second level names are only separated by one dot. For example, www.joesmith.name. According to GNR, the second level domain space is more popular and should engender strong demand upon its release.
“This opening marks a significant event in the Internet domain name history,” says Geir Rasmussen, CEO of Global Name Registry. “On January 14th our namespace becomes structurally similar to .com. We expect strong demand for the first hundreds of thousands of names that are taken everywhere else, like on .com, .net, .biz and .info. Basically, from being a special interest TLD, .name goes mainstream. Working with VeriSign (verisign.com) makes us confident that this launch will be technically smooth and successful.”
.name is the last TLD to become fully open of the seven new TLDs introduced by ICANN in 2001.
“Registrars and hosting companies will find it far easier to sell the new .name names and we believe this opening will make hundreds of thousands of individuals learn about .name for the first time,” said Hakon Haugnes, president and vice president of sales at Global Name Registry.
