CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, is the official registry operator of the .CA country code Top-Level-Domain. Last week HEXONET had the opportunity to attend the annual CIRA Symposium and Annual General Meeting this year held in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The General Meeting was very well attended.  Many updates and metrics on growth of .CA were announced, as well as, some of the new initiatives that the Registry has been working on.  Two highlights of the conference had to be the two keynote speakers, Jonathan Zittrain, considered the foremost authority on the future of the Internet and Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr, the popular photosharing website.

Some of the Highlights of the Meeting Include:

• .CA is experiencing very healthy annual growth at a rate of 14%, together with a renewal rate of 79%
• There are now more than 1.6 million .CA domains registered
• CIRA is the fastest growing ccTLD registry in the world
• .CA and .COM comparative Canadian market share analysis – .CA has grown its market share to 29% while .COM has decreased down to 56%
• Last year, CIRA successfully completed a major milestone with the launch of an entirely new EPP registry system.  The industry standard EPP-based system, ensures reliability, as well as, greater security and added robustness.
• CIRA is evaluating the implementation of French character Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) – a special website for feedback from key stakeholders has already been setup.
• CIRA’s current Canadian Presence Requirements (CPR) to register a .CA domain will be reviewed at the next CIRA board meeting in December 2011.

The Value of Being a CIRA Member:

Membership in CIRA is free and is open to anyone who holds a .CA domain.  Currently there are over 15,000 members. And the most important privilege of CIRA membership is that it gives you the opportunity to influence the CIRA registry.  It is through membership that anyone can get involved in CIRA’s governance and direction by either lobbying to its Board or even vying for a position at a Board of Directors Elections (which is happening this week!).

Members also have opportunities to influence the direction and rules of the registry through member surveys, as well as, direct member consultation (like the IDN discussion).  The fascinating part of being an active CIRA member is that your efforts not only go into influencing CIRA, but also the worldwide Internet via CIRA’s involvement with other international Internet organizations. Moreover, active CIRA members have access to the Registry’s quarterly e-newsletter and are also invited to CIRA sponsored networking and business development opportunities.

CIRA membership is very unique in the domain industry as very few registries actually follow this methodology.  However, the Registry feels that it is only through membership that the Registry can operate in the best interests of its users.  CIRA best sums up membership as such, “If your domain is your storefront on the Internet’s digital village, CIRA is CA’s Town Council. Being a .CA member gives you a voice in influencing and electing the Council. No other organization represents Canadians on the Internet like CIRA. .CA membership gives you access to that community.”

HEXONET would like to thank the entire team at CIRA for their continued dedication to fostering the development of .CA and building up this key Canadian public resource.  Thank you for your leadership role in shaping Canada’s Internet.

If you are a .CA domain holder, we encourage you to evaluate the benefits of becoming an ACTIVE CIRA member today.

HEXONET is pleased to announce that we just added the country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) .PH (Philippines) to our portfolio of domain extensions offered to resellers.

To introduce and provide knowledge to our resellers about the .PH ccTLD, we have garnered special insights from Francis Simisim.  Francis is the founder of TechFilipino.com, a blog that covers technology, gadgets and web related news. He is also a domain name investor.   HEXONET wants to sincerely thank Francis for his time and insight into the .PH ccTLD.

The .PH domain is still in the early stages of adoption so there tremendous opportunities and latent potential for this ccTLD.  Read below and get excited about registering your .PH domain today!

QUESTION & ANSWERS:

HEXONET: What are the most predominant extensions used in the Philippines? We hear that it is .COM and .COM.PH. Also do you believe there will be more interest in .COM.PH vs. PH?

Francis: The most common is .COM.PH which is what most older Philippines websites use. However, with more people accessing the web and with ease of use, .PH is now rising pretty fast. As a matter of fact, Joel Dissini, the owner of dotPH has released this statement recently … http://techfilipino.com/official-statement-from-dotph-on-the-future-of-com-ph-vs-ph-domain-names/

HEXONET: How active is the domainer market in the Philippines?

Francis: There’s really only a few domineers in the Philippines (especially the .PH and .COM.PH). There is myself, three individuals from the U.S., a local Filipino gentleman, a Korean domainer and some Japanese domainers. Rick Latona invested before and registered 1200 domains, however he dropped all of his .PH domains.

HEXONET: Are there any trends regarding the .PH ccTLD that are worth noting?

Francis: More and more websites are appearing and are under development. You have huge companies investing in domains like pep.ph (an entertainment news portal), spot.ph (an online urban lifestyle guide to the best of Manila) and stir.ph (a showbiz website) which is now making .PH more favoured. Also, prices for these TLDs haven’t moved up or down the past few years which is still unfavourable to locals (~$8 for .COM  vs. $35 .PH). There’s also a huge number of cyber-squatters who are registering a lot of brand and big site names.

HEXONET: Any challenges / obstacles for .PH moving forward?

Francis: The major obstacle is price (as mentioned above). More people are inclined to invest in domains like domainph.com than getting the exact name with .PH. Also with fewer people developing value-added sites, it is not gaining popularity with the locals.

HEXONET: As you have in-depth knowledge of the high-tech / Internet market in the Philippines, are there any unique trends that make the Philippines stand out?

Francis: With telecom companies offering cheaper unlimited Internet, more and more people are now connected on the Internet wirelessly.

Overview:

Registry:  dotPH

Registration Period:  2 years / 5 years / 10 years

Available Zones:  PH.,  COM.PH, NET.PH, ORG.PH

Restrictions:  No restrictions. Anyone can register.

Verisign has just published its latest Domain Name Industry Brief for this last quarter ending June 30, 2011.

We wanted to provide our readers with some of the key highlights:

• The second quarter closed with a base of more than 215 million domain name registrations across all TLDs (Top-Level Domains)
• Registrations grew by more than 8.6% compared to the second quarter of 2010
• The base of ccTLDs (country-code Top-Level Domains) now stands at 84.6 million domains, an 8.4% increase year over year in the base
• There are more than 250 ccTLD extensions globally, with the top 10 ccTLDs compromising 60% of all registrations.
• .EU dropped one spot to ninth and .CN moved up one notch to eighth.

This report verifies HEXONET’s own data on the growth of ccTLDs.  All resellers and customers should consider selling ccTLDs or adding even more.  With this growth and the breadth of ccTLDs this is only the beginning.