Internet Grows to 351.8 Million Domain Name Registrations in the 1st Quarter of 2019

VeriSign, Inc., a global provider of domain name registry services and internet infrastructure, today announced that the first quarter of 2019 closed with 351.8 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 3.1 million domain name registrations, or 0.9 percent, compared to the fourth quarter of 2018.1,2 Domain name registrations have grown by 18.0 million, or 5.4 percent, year over year.1,2

The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of 154.8 million domain name registrations in the domain name base3 at the end of the first quarter of 2019, an increase of 1.8 million domain name registrations, or 1.2 percent, compared to the fourth quarter of 2018. The .com and .net TLDs had a combined increase of 6.5 million domain name registrations, or 4.4 percent, year over year. As of March 31, 2019, the .com domain name base totaled 141.0 million domain name registrations, while the .net domain name base totaled 13.8 million domain name registrations.

New .com and .net domain name registrations totaled 9.8 million at the end of the first quarter of 2019, compared to 9.6 million domain name registrations at the end of the first quarter of 2018.

Verisign publishes the Domain Name Industry Brief to provide internet users throughout the world with statistical and analytical research and data on the domain name industry. The first quarter 2019 Domain Name Industry Brief, as well as previous reports, can be obtained at Verisign.com/DNIBIndia.

About Verisign

Verisign, a global provider of domain name registry services and internet infrastructure, enables internet navigation for many of the world’s most recognized domain names. Verisign enables the security, stability, and resiliency of key internet infrastructure and services, including providing root zone maintainer services, operating two of the 13 global internet root servers, and providing registration services and authoritative resolution for the .com and .net top-level domains, which support the majority of global e-commerce. To learn more about what it means to be Powered by Verisign

Soon Internet Domains to be Available in 22 Indian Regional Languages Scripts

Son you can see and own website domain names in your own regional language as global internet body ICANN is working on a proposal to enable booking of website names in non-English languages including Indian scripts starting with Devanagari, Gurmukhi and Gujarati.

ICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a global multi-stakeholder organization responsible for IP address space allocation, has been on a new task to support domain names in numerous languages spoken in India, including the 22 scheduled languages of the country.

ICANN India head Samiran Gupta said, “Work is on for nine Indian scripts – Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu. These scripts are expected to cover many different local languages."

A Neo-Brāhmī Generation Panel (NBGP), set up under ICANN, has started consultation to enable registeration of website name extension, technically called top level domain (TLD), like .com, .net, .in, in the three Indian scripts.

The Neo-Brāhmī group is so named to cover all such scripts used today and which are based on Brāhmī scrpit, which is an ancestor of all scripts used to write modern Indo-Aryan languages in Southeast Asia including Burmese, Thai, Lao, Khmer (in South-East Asia), and others in Central Asia.

In October last year, ICANN began “IDN Variant TLDs” initiative with six generation panels, based on specific scripts from major writing systems -- Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, CJK, Arabic and Devanagari.

The technical standards once freezed through the process, called Label Generation Rules for the Root Zone (RZ-LGR), will allow people to use any word of their choice as TLD in the Indian scripts.

"After integration in root zone of these LGR's people from all over world will be able to apply for top level domains in these scripts. This means that internet domains will be possible for public at large in names of there choice and make internet access in there own language," NGBP Chairperson co-chair and Data XGen Plus founder and CEO, Ajay Data told .

Also Read - From 1st Oct'16 The US Will Lose Its Authority Over Internet’s Naming System

The root zone are the main servers that convert name of website in digital form and identify address of server where the website is hosted to connect visitors of online portals. These servers are managed by the not-for-profit organisation ICANN.

While there are nine scripts in works at ICANN, NBGP intends to publish the proposals for the developing technical standards for all nine in three sets starting with Devanagari, Gurmukhi, and Gujarati.

At present website name with extension .bharat can be booked only in Devanagari script which has limited letters that are identified by internet servers.

In 2014, Indian government launched Dot Bharat (.भारत) domain in Devanagari script. The domain has been launched for non-English speaking people, and will cover eight languages like Hindi, Dogri, Bodo, Maithili, Konkani, Marathi, Nepali and Sindhi.

At present you can also search content in the regional language on Google. But, the effort from ICANN is to also enable the domain name in the local language that will make the existing process easier and would also enable the system to publish regional language content that is being searched by the users.

Notably, Devanagari was representative of the Brāhmī family scripts and is currently used for 11 out of 22 official languages of India (Boro/Bodo, Dogri, Hindi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit, Santhali and Sindhi).

In 2016, ICANN introduced .Google, .Apple, .ibm, and other branded internet addresses.

In the same year, India's state-owned telecom operatoe BSNL introduced free E-Mail Address service in 8 Indian Languages to its broadband users by launching a ‘DataMail’ service. Now BSNL broadband users will be able to open an email ID in DataMail service in their own language.

Via - Times of India | References - Zipdocs.Tips

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