In a statement welcoming .asia to the Internet, EURid said that while no one knows which names will be in the highest demand when the new TLD becomes available next week, “EURid’s experience offers some clues.”
“In the first two days .eu domain names became available, EURid received 227 applications for sex.eu, 118 for hotel.eu and 94 for travel.eu,” EURid said in its statement.
“The .asia registry will probably see the same rush for generic names but that will pass,” said Marc Van Wesemael, general manager of EURid. “After a time, Europeans realized that a .eu domain was good for business. People in Asia will surely discover that as well.”
The launch of .asia, referred to by the sponsoring DotAsia Organization as the “sunrise” of the TLD, is divided into three basic phases, which have been dubbed SR1, SR2 and SR3.
According to a statement issued by DotAsian, the SR1 phase “provides priority for governments in the community to reserve and register domains,” while SR2 will allow registered mark owners to acquire domains corresponding to the marks they own, and SR3 will permit “registered companies, organizations and other entities in the DotAsia Community to obtain domains corresponding to their entity names.”
The SR1 and SR2 periods both officially begin on Oct. 9; the SR3 phase will run from Nov. 13 through Jan. 15.
DotAsia said that it created the multiphase launch system after seeing the “experience of past domain launches where chaotic situations arise because of a huge number of interested parties racing to register the domain names they want.”
“A simplistic first-come-first-served model essentially renders into a chaotic lottery-like situation during the opening moments of a domain registry,” said Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia. “We have studied previous launches, and have gone through an extensive community process in the creation of the sunrise policies, including multiple public drafts. Generally, we believe this is a more stable and assuring process, and one which encourages positive usage and adoption for .asia domain names.”
