Nominet To Release Two Letter, One Character and Other Reserved .uk Domain Names

Posted on March 9th, 2010 by admin in Domain News | No Comments »

Hot on the heels of other ccTld and gTld registries that recently announced/released their previously reserved short domain names (.de and .pro registries for examile), Nominet, the .uk registry has announced a consultation period to consider releasing two letter, one character and other reserved domain names.

The domain names, which were reserved prior to the launch of the registry in 1996, can now be made available to the general public as the technical and policy reasons for withholding these domains have ceased to be relevant.

“After much discussion the policy committee of Nominet decided that a ‘sunrise’ approach, like that used for the rollout of the .eu and .asia domains, is the best way to offer the new domains to ensure that key combinations are fairly assigned,” said Nick Wenban-Smith, senior legal counsel at Nominet.

Domain names that may be released include:
* All currently reserved one character domains in .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk and .net.uk1
* All currently reserved two letter domains in .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk and .net.uk
* We may also release a series of domain names previously reserved e.g.
o Domain names that use a gTLD at the third level, e.g. biz.org.uk
o Domains that use a Second Level Domain at the third level, e.g. sch.org.uk

To view a list of all possible domain names that may be released go here.

To view the consultation notes on this matter released by Nominet, go here.