Stephane Van Gelder - .EU

IDNs coming to .EU on December 10

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:13:53 +0200

Last week, on the French version of this blog, I talked about a rumour going around that .EU registry EURid was to introduce IDNs (domain names with accents and other special characters) before the end of the year.

Participants at the second conference for ccTLD registries and registrars currently being held in Slovenia have confirmed this.

EURid plans to release IDNs in all 23 European Union languages on December 10.

Dot EU now at 3 million

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:31:39 +0100

The .EU registration counter on EURid's homepage on Monday January 12, 2009, showing more than 3 million names.

Sunday January 11, 2009 will go down as a landmark date for .EU: the day it passed the 3 million registered domain mark!

I think Europeans can be proud. Although it's still very much a young domain (it was opened for general registration on April 7, 2006), .EU was a success from the start and already had 2 million domains in June 2006!

Since then, growth has continued, albeit at a slower rate. But many a suffix manager would be delighted with 3 million names in 3 years.

.EU is also starting to be used – arguably the real measure of a domain's success. It's just a personal stat of course, but it used to be that seeing a .EU domain on a billboard or in a magazine would stop me dead in my tracks with surprise. Now, hardly a day goes by without me seeing .EU used somewhere.

IDNs coming to .EU

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:35:29 +0200

EURid is technically ready to implement IDNs in a relatively short timeframe in .EU. However, there is still a certain amount of administrative work to be done, including several meetings with the European Commission.

One of the issues still to be finalised is the list of names that member states will request be reserved and not made available for general registration.

European registrants can therefore expect to see IDNs become available in .EU sometime next year.

EURid's new supporting organisation

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:28:21 +0200

Regular readers will know that I am a proud member of EURid's Requirements Panel (RP). In fact, I'm writing this on the train back from EURid's Brussels headquarters where the 5th meeting of this group, set up to help provide EURid with registrar input on improving their domain management systems and processes, was held.

In addition to the RP, EURid now has a second registrar group to work with. On October 8, the Registrar Advisory Board (RAB) had its first meeting. Nine registrar representatives serve on this RAB, the main function of which is to provide EURid's board with advice on its long-term business decisions. The RAB is very much a "supporting organisation" in the ICANN sense of the phrase, just like the GNSO for example exists to advise the ICANN board on issues and policies relating to the generic TLD namespace.

So where the RP will focus on practical implementation issues, the RAB will consider more long-term strategic decisions.

Continue reading "EURid's new supporting organisation"

It's Requirements Panel time again!

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Wed, 28 May 2008 11:42:45 +0200

EURid's Requirements Panel at work during its 3rd meeting, in February.

Next week I'm back in Brussels at .EU registry EURid's headquarters for a day. It's the fourth .EU Requirements Panel (RP) meeting, where representatives from 7 registrars meet with EURid staff to work on improving .EU.

The panel looks at "requirements" and sorts them in order of priority so that EURid's development team can then include them in their schedule. I consider the RP a fine example of a registry working in an intelligent manner to improve itself and its product (.EU in this case) by involving its sales network (the registrars).

The RP is a EURid initiative, and EURid controls it. But having already taken part in 3 meetings, I can say that the registrars' views are what counts. Membership on the RP was by invitation only, and EURid has tried to put together a panel that would be a good representation of its registrar community as a whole. The 7 registrars are: Ascio, Ezone, Home, Key Systems, Registerit, Strato and us.

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Striving to improve: auth codes coming to .EU

stephane.vangelder@indom.com (Stephane Van Gelder) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:58:56 +0100

Registrar and registry representatives sit on EURid's innovative Requirements Panel, which held its 3rd meeting at EURid's Brussels HQ last week.

I was in Brussels (Belgium) last week for EURid's third "requirements panel" (RP) meeting. The RP is an initiative launched by EURid to work more closely with its registrars. Reacting to criticism that it hadn't done so during the .EU launch, last year EURid invited a few registrars to take an active role in this project.

Seven registrars, including INDOM, were chosen to sit on the panel as representatives of the accredited .EU registrar community.

About once a quarter, the RP meets to discuss those requirements, generally of a technical nature, that would make life easier for .EU registrars. Representatives of EURid's legal, technical and admin departments are there to ensure that the requests made by the registrars; do not go against the rules set for EURid by the European Commission; can fit into, and are not redundant with, the registry's own development programme; are technically feasible for the registry.

At each meeting, based on their own day-to-day experiences with .EU and input from the registrar community, each registrar brings new requirements for consideration. These will then be voted upon by the RP as a whole and given a priority ranking to see which gets looked at first.

Continue reading "Striving to improve: auth codes coming to .EU"