Norwegian ccTLD To Open Up To Private Individuals

Norid, the ccTLD registry of Norway, has announced that they will be changing their policies in order to allow private individuals to register .no domain names. The changes come after the registry conducted a public consultation earlier this year.

The new policy will come into effect on June 17th 2014 at 10 am local time. Interestingly the registry will not be offering any form of  “sunrise”, but will instead run a “draw” should there be more than one applicant for the same name.

Norway’s country code policies have always been quite restrictive, with strict limits being placed on both who could register .no domain names and how many they could register. However, even with the restrictions in place there are over 620 thousand .no domain names currently registered.

Up until a couple of years ago Norwegian companies could register up to 20 domains, that limit was increased to 100 back in 2011. The 20 domain name limit was a big increase on the previous restriction of 1 domain per company! (As a sidenote, many country code operators had similar restrictions in place initially)