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.

A friendly reminder to our resellers that HEXONET is running a fantastic promotion on CN.COM domains. CentralNic, the registry operator, is featuring a price promotion for CN.COM and HEXONET is passing this price onto our customers. Extended for a limited time, all new one (1) year registrations of CN.COM are at the amazing price of 9.40* (net price 7.90) USD. This promotion runs until December 31, 2011.

Why Consider a CN.COM Domain?

• The numbers are amazing. China now has the largest number of Internet users in the world at 485 million people (vs. 245 million in the US). China has 318 million mobile Internet users.
• CN.COM is an unrestricted alternative to the official .CN ccTLD (country-code Top-Level Domain). No restrictions on who may register a .CN.COM domain
• If you are already selling into the Chinese market or plan on entering this market
• You may want to consider potential ‘defensive’ domain registrations for brand protection reasons
• IDN capable: CN.COM supports IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) in both traditional and simplified Chinese scripts.