DotAsia Organisation, the Hong Kong-based group that operates the .asia top-level internet domain name registry, will go live next week after achieving more than half a million domain name applications for registration since October last year.
The organisation has succeeded in sparking a digital land rush with the new regional top-level domain (TLD) extension, which has elicited 505,838 applications for registration.
The .asia registry will go live on March 26, when domain names will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
DotAsia's authority to sponsor and run the registry was delegated in 2006 by the United States-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the assignment of domain names and internet protocol addresses worldwide. A domain name identifies one or more IP addresses. Each domain name includes a suffix of the TLD that it belongs to.
The number of so-called generic TLDs is limited and these include .com (for businesses), .edu (educational institutions), .gov (government agencies) and .org (organisations). A country code TLD, such as .hk, denotes location.
'Beyond just brand protection, the .asia domain can be an asset to an enterprise's corporate identity and can be used as a portal to the whole Asia market,' said Edmon Chung Wang-on, the chief executive of DotAsia.
The top domain name registrars in the land rush phase of registration completed last week include AsiaDNS, Dotalliance, Communigal Communications, GoDaddy.com, Key-Systems, Gabia, HiChina Web Solutions, DomainPeople, Yesnic and NamesBeyond.com.
