OECD releases report on top level domain names

THE ORGANISATION for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released a report on market development and allocation of top level domain names.

The report, compiled by Dr Sam Patridge and Masayuki Matsui of the OECD's technology directorate, reviews the reforms introduced by ICANN and the impact they've had.

According to the OECD, ICANN's reform for registration of generic top level domain names has been very successful, with the division between registry and registrar prices helping to create a competitive market that's resulted in lower prices.

The report said that at the end of 2003 slightly less than 56 million names had been registered as generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) in OECD member countries.

The registries are maintained by different authorities and organisations - for example .aero is run by SITA (Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques) in Switzerland, and .com by Verisign. Verisign also acts as the registry for .net, but the agreement between ICANN and Verisign expires in June next year, while the .com registry expires in 2007 - although the company has a four year renewal option.

A number of proposed TLDs include .jobs, .mail, .mobi, .tel, .cat (Catalonia), and .xxx. The last is for what the OECD calls the "online adult entertainment community", somewhat coyly, operated by The International Foundation for Online Responsibility.

The 55 page report includes a heap of information and graphs giving, for example on page 16, the market share of domain name registrations under major gTLDs for the OECD countries.

Here's the PDF. µ