June 21, 2019
Being able to register a domain name directly under .au appears to be another step closer and could be available quite soon.
According to a recent update from auDA, the namespace's administrator and self-regulatory policy body, the ability to register directly under .au (e.g. domainregistration.au) is still scheduled to be implemented in the final quarter of this year.
There will be a priority registration process - the draft rules state there will be two categories, 1 and 2. Existing third level .au domains (e.g. domainregistration.com.au) registered on or before 4 February 2018 will be assigned to priority category 1, while those after are assigned category 2. These categories will help determine who will get first dibs on a "second level" .au name if there is competition for it.
You can read the draft rules for the priority registration process here and auDA rules relating to direct registration implementation in the .au namespace here.
The wholesale price of .au addresses will remain the same but registrars and resellers are able to set their own pricing, as with other .au domain names.
On March 26 this year, the auDA Board-appointed Policy Review Panel (PRP) invited feedback on its final recommendations for direct .au registrations. The submission period closed on April 12.
In other news from auDA, the Authority announced on Tuesday the immediate resignation of auDA Chair Chris Leptos AM. Mr. Leptos was appointed the independent Chair of auDA back in 2017.
"Under Chris’ leadership, auDA underwent the most significant constitutional and policy reform since it was founded two decades ago," says a statement from auDA.
The process to select a permanent replacement is to commence immediately.
auDA has its roots in an organisation called the Australian Domain Name Administration, or ADNA; which was set up in the 1990's. ADNA subsequently through some massive changes and renamed to .au Domain Administration (auDA), which then took over operations of the .au country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) in 2001. The history of the ccTLD actually stretches back more than 30 years - you can learn more about how .au evolved here.
Trivia: at the time of writing there are 3,192,767 Australian domain names actively registered.
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