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    Big shake-up for NZ website domain names

  • The biggest shake-up to New Zealand website addresses in a decade is about to get under way.


    From tomorrow, users can have shorter, more simple web address ending with .nz instead of .co.nz or .org.nz.


    Currently there are 15 different options to use but from 1pm tomorrow people can have just .nz.


    "People will be able to register shorter, simpler, more representative domain names directly at .nz in addition to all of the existing domain names," Campbell Gardiner from the Domain Name Commission says.


    The move has just happened in the UK and New Zealand is ahead of Australia and the US in following suit.


    "This is a big change, this is probably the biggest to the .nz domain name space since 2002," Mr Gardiner says.


    Chris O'Connell from NZ's Telecommunications Users Association says it's a way of getting a brand associated with the country and nothing else.


    Current websites such as tvnz.co.nz have six months to reserve or register the .nz equivalent and after that the name is open to the public. If there are entities which share a similar name the parties must agree who gets the shorter .nz version. If they can't, then no one gets it.


    "If you don't take control of these aspects of your brand someone else is free to do it and you'll never get your name back," Mr O'Connell says.


    "It's going to happen gradually so people who already own nz domains are going to keep using those in the interim because we've got everything set up around them.


    "But I think that everyone will just gradually migrate to the name .nz...it makes perfect sense."



  • TVNZ - One News (30/09/2014) Source