Those who have been hankering for a .joburg, .durban or .capetown city top-level domain need wait no longer. The ZA Central Registry (ZACR) has opened the three new domains to registration by the general public.
Already, there have been 623 applications for .capetown, 297 for .joburg and 250 for .durban. The Cape Town number has, however, been skewed by one person who applied for what the ZACR describes as a “staggering” 237 .capetown domains.
Registration of names from today (4 November) will follow the usual process where applicants register names through their chosen accredited registrars or resellers, the ZACR said in a statement.
“Different registrars will charge different prices due to bundled services they provide in addition to the basic domain name registration service,” it said.
Three of South Africa’s four major banks have applied for a city domain name. And there are 32 auctions pending for domains that have more than one applicant. Most of South Africa’s favourite technology brands have applied for all three city domain names, according to the ZACR.
“The 1 170 applications for ZAdotCity domain names have been received during the parallel sunrise and land-rush periods managed by the ZACR,” the statement said.
“These time periods were designed to protect the rights of trademark holders prior to ZAdotCities domain names becoming available on a first-come, first-served basis from November 2014. This latter period is known as the general availability phase when intellectual property owners will no longer receive priority when it comes to registering domain names within South Africa’s three new city top-level domains.”
“From November, any Internet user globally with an affinity for South Africa’s three best-known cities will be able to register a South African city top-level domain on a first-come, first-served basis,” said ZACR CEO Lucky Masilela. The ZACR also operates the .co.za, .web.za, .org.za, .net.za domains. — (c) 2014 NewsCentral Media
