Registrations of the .ae domain name have increased by 30 per cent this year, with the most being from Dubai, said the country’s telecom?regulator.
The Telecommunication Regulation Authority (TRA) told Emirates Business it had witnessed growth this year mainly because of the new policy framework and a non-monopolistic environment among registrars.
“In the period [August 2008 to August 2009], the number of new registrations increased by 30 per cent compared to the corresponding period the year before. There are more registrars [no monopoly] providing .ae domain name registration. Customers have the choice to select their registrar as competition leads to better service. The registration process brought online has also made it easier,” said TRA.
In fact, during the second quarter in 2009, country code TLDs (ccTLDs) globally rose by 14 per cent year- over-year to 74.4 million domain names.
.ae is the internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the UAE. It is administered by .aeDA, which is part of TRA.
The .ae domain was originally delegated to internet service provider UUNET. Recognising the domain should be administered in the country, it was transferred in 1995 to etisalat, following a brief period of administration by the UAE University. Since then, etisalat, through UAE Network Information Centre (UAEnic) division, has been responsible for operation of .ae domain.
During 2006, the TRA announced that .ae management and operations would be re-delegated to it from etisalat/UAEnic, the current .ae ccTLD manager.
A new entity called .ae Domain Administration (.ae DA) was formed to take care of management and operations of .ae based on the latest Domain Name System (DNS) and domain registry technologies. During January 2008, IANA(Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) officially re-delegated .ae domain to TRA.
In August 2008, .aeDA took over DNS (domain name system) and launched their services with the new registry system, which supports registry-registrar model. Currently, .aeDA has accredited 15 registrars, including etisalat, from different parts of the world.
