Australians are passionate about their nationality; the land of the Oz has its own ccTLD: dot .AU.
Only problem is, you can’t register domains in .AU directly, you’d have to register a .com.au, which is also restricted to Australians.
Australia’s regulatory body for domain names, (auDA), recently announced its 2015 Names Policy Panel proposal.
Australian domainers, such as Michael Gilmour and Mike Robertson, are certain excited about this! π
In it, individuals and entities in Australia should be allowed to register domain names directly under dot .au, such as ABC.au.
This way more small businesses will enter the online market, and more domains – shorter too – will be available.
This new domain name option has not been possible before.
Under the proposal, domains ending with com.au,Β net.au would remain available.
But given the new options, many Australian entrepreneurs and domain investors alike will switch to the new TLD, the way it happened with .co.uk and .uk.
For more information on the subject, read this article.
Many folk are not happy with this,, they spent good money acquiring their .com.au and now a money grab new extension appears. We don’t need or really want it. When in doubt go back to the old saying “If it aint broken ……. don’t fix it”
HD – Not sure if there will be a grandfathering for .com.au owners either.
Yep that’s part of the issue, other owners such as .net.au should be involved.