Businesses line up for an EU internet address
February 28, 2005
Paris - Europe is about to become an internet fixture with the launch of its own extension - the .eu domain - and businesses are preparing for the battle to bear the precious two letters.
While the date for the attribution of the new extension has not yet been set, businesses have been gearing up for the prestigious new Web address.
Five hundred million potential European candidates for the new domain would converge in a "gold rush", said Indom, a French firm specialising in the registration of domain names.
"The opening of a new extension on the internet is a major event" for businesses, said Thomas Sertillanges, Indom's communications director.
At the end of 2004, there were an estimated 65 million domain names, with 32 million ending in the .com extension.
Unlike .com - originally created to designate commercial activities but then attributed freely - .eu aims to keep its specificity: an EU identity.
"The companies who want to give a European dimension to their businesses can't allow themselves to be absent from this new zone," said Stephane Van Gelder, a co-founder of Indom and the administrator of Afnic, the body that manages domain names in France.
The idea of a .eu extension was first discussed in 1997 and by April 2002, the European Commission, which saw it as a way of developing e-commerce in Europe, decided to pursue the project.
In October 2004, the commission gave the green light to EURid, a Belgium-based registrar of European domain names, to set up the rules of attribution.
Those rules are expected to be published in the coming weeks, although their main points are widely known.
The .eu extension will be available for any business with its headquarters, its administration or its main office in the EU, as well as any organisation established in the EU or any person residing in any of the bloc's 25 member states.
Switzerland will not be eligible for the shared identity, at least not initially.
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