G'day,

Michael Tippett,
Director of Marketing
http://www.afternic.com

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In June, auDA, Australia's federally backed .au administrator, appealed to ICANN to intercede in its struggle against Robert Elz, the University of Melbourne programmer who has controlled the .au domain since 1986. Elz ignored pleas to relinquish control to auDA, despite having agreed to do so. ICANN, via IANA, was then asked to redelegate the domain to auDA-a legally and politically complex undertaking.

When auDA does gain control of .au, it may revisit and reverse many of Elz's policies that made .au one of the most restricted ccTLDs in cyberspace. In fact, Domain Stats.com estimates fewer than 8,700 registrations in the .au domain-fewer than Slovenia's .si (9,426) and less than 1/10th of Sweden's .se (90,522). At the moment, .au registrants-who must be registered Australian businesses-are limited to a single name per commercial entity (an entity can be a registered product name), while generic words and business descriptions (defined by the Australian yellow pages), are off limits, as are geographic names.

When auDA takes command, it promises that things will be different in .au. First, the organization plans to allow unlimited registrations, and then expects to evaluate other restrictions, particularly the bans on generic words and geographic names.

Meanwhile the Australian consumer market is growing rapidly, according to a government report. Over 4 million Australians pay for Internet access, with approximately 3.5 million household subscribers (neither business nor government users) counted among them. In the first quarter of this year, 76,000 new users joined this rank.

With the Australian consumer audience in its infancy and the .au domain poised to open its doors to a flood of new registrations, the slow-emerging Australian market deserves considerable attention in the coming weeks.

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