Qinetics, a registry solution provider in Malaysia, announced on Sunday that they have been awarded the contract to manage the .OM ccTLD for the country of Oman. The entire company press release can be read at the end of the post.
The ccTLD .OM is one of three highly desirable ccTLDs because of the typo traffic that spills over to these extension by way of internet users leaving off a letter when typing the popular GTLD .COM. The traffic that would come to any domain with this extension by mistake could be sent to a search engine landing page. For example, say a registrant were to purchase the domain name Facebook.om. From the sheer volume of traffic that Facebook.com receives, it is natural that thousands of users will leave off the “C” in .com every day and it can be assumed many of those users will click or search on whatever page they land on.
Other ccTLDs that benefit from this .COM typo leak include .CO and .CM. Columbia controls the .CO extension and does not currently have .CO domain names wild-carding. The second extension is .CM which is the ccTLD for the country of Cameroon. The success behind the wild-carding of that countries traffic was talked about in a Business2.0 article about Kevin Ham. Ham stated that the traffic through that channel was “in the ballpark” of 8 million unique visitors per month.
Since that article, many of the most popular .CM domain names have apparently switched ownership or have been diverted from the original Agoga.com lander. Domains such as facebook.cm and yahoo.cm go to a viralvideos.org lander. CNN.cm or ABC.cm goes to a domainsponsor lander and Google.cm goes to an Eharmony landing page. It can be assumed that these other players jumped in after reading the story. As John Berryhill put it, “As soon as it started happening, there was a huge sense of ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”
It isn’t clear from this announcement wether the operators of the .OM registry will open up registrations to non-residents, auction domain names, or even operate a wild-carding similar to the .CM registry operations. What is clear is that this registry operation will have a host of people knocking on their door soon including many attornies.
Good luck Qinetics. Good luck domainers.
PRESS RELEASE
KUALA LUMPUR**, Malaysia, October 6th, 2008* — Qinetics Solutions Berhad (Qinetics), a leading Registry system provider, announced today that it has been awarded the tender by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of Oman to provide consultancy services to develop the domain name policy framework for Oman.
Each country or autonomous territory has a 2-letter country code that represents its “Top Level Domain (TLD)” under which Internet domain names can be assigned. For Oman, the country code is ‘.om’.
TRA, the body in Oman that regulates the telecommunication sector of the Sultanate of Oman is in the process of taking over the function of managing the ‘.om’ TLD from the current incumbent ‘.om’ manager Omantel.
“TRA is committed to implement a fair, efficient and effective world-class framework for the ‘.om’ TLD. A consultancy is thus requested to review the domain name environment for the ‘.om’ TLD taking into account the local and cultural values of the country.” said Eng. Naashiah S. Al-Kharusi, TRA Board Member.
“TRA decided to award the tender to Qinetics who shall draft the necessary regulations and policy framework documents as required for implementation of a professional .om TLD administration.”
The tender require Qinetics to provide a comprehensive consultancy service spanning areas of Administrative Policy Framework, Domain Name Policy Framework and Industry Model Framework.
Among other things, Qinetics will advise TRA on the setup of the entity to manage ‘.om’, registrar accreditation framework and domain name policies such as domain name eligibility and allocation policy, WHOIS policy, reserved names policy, complaints policy, domain life cycle policy and domain name dispute resolution policy.
“We are indeed honored to be selected by TRA for this consultancy. Our dedicated consultants within the RegistryASP team have years of practical experiences running ccTLD registry operations, registry systems and also registrar systems so we are intimately familiar with all aspects of domain name business. We are confident that we will be able to provide sound advices to TRA on the best domain name management framework for Oman,“ said TK Tan, CEO of Qinetics.
About TRA, Oman
The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) was established in 2002, to liberalize and promote the telecommunications services in the Sultanate of Oman under the Telecommunications Act which was issued under the Royal Decree No. 30/2002. TRA is committed to develop the telecommunications sector in the Sultanate by regulating and maintaining the telecom services, promoting the interest of telecommunications services providers and beneficiaries, and ensuring that consumers receive world class standard quality telecommunications services, with range of choices within reasonable limits at affordable prices. * *The Authority’s policies and regulations is aimed at the development of infrastructure and the attraction of foreign investment into the sector to further promote the Sultanate’s economy and increasing employment prospects for Omani citizens. Website: http://www.tra.gov.om
About Qinetics Solutions Berhad
Qinetics, a regional company headquartered in Malaysia, focuses on Registry and Registrar service, consultancy and solution, software development and IT services. Qinetics is a MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) pioneer-status company in Malaysia for its merits in R&D. Qinetics’ subsidiary, Web Commerce Communications Limited (WEBCC – www.webnic.cc) is the largest ICANN Accredited Registrar in South East Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan (source: Frost & Sullivan), serving over 400,000 domain names in over 40 domain name extensions. Qinetics has over 5 years of experience in the development of RegistryASP SRS (www.registryASP.com) – its flagship Shared Registry-Registrar System (SRS) solutions that powers country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) such as .hk (Hong Kong), .sg (Singapore), .cd (Democratic Republic of Congo), .my (Malaysia) and .gw (Guinea Bissau). Website: http://www.qinetics.net
(c) 2008 DomainNameNews.com
Domain Convergence, October 6-8, 2008, Niagara Falls
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Original post by Adam Strong
