The Aland Islands Country Code Top-Level Domain .Ax Goes Live

Mariehamn, Finland, August 16, 2006 --(PR.com)-- Today the Aland Islands Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) became operational. The Aland Islands is an autonomous administrative province of Finland and has up until now been using aland.fi, which is part of the Finnish ccTLD .fi.

The .ax domain was passed into Finnish law this spring and on 9 June the last hurdle was removed when ICANN adopted the .ax domain. The new top-level domain will make the Aland Islands more visible on the Internet. The Aland Islands already has its own stamps and its own flag, and getting its own top-level domain name will further strengthen the Islands’ identity.

The registration fee is 50 € for three years, however registering .ax domains is limited to local persons and business. And since there are about 26,000 inhabitants less than 400 domains have been registered so far.

Some of the rules for the top-level domain name are:
- A domain name may not be a word denoting form of enterprise, form of foundation, from of community or abbreviation thereof.
- A domain name cannot be a top level domain whether it is a generic (i.e. .info, .net) or a country code.
- A domain name may not contain defamatory expressions or expressions that encourage criminal activities.
- A domain name must be active (there must be name servers), and it is not allowed to apply for domains to store or resell.

Since reselling domains is not allowed domaining – or business of buying, selling, developing and monetizing domain names – will be limited.

For more information about .Ax go to the local government’s site at:
http://www.regeringen.ax/axreg/ (information in Swedish only) or for information in English visits Axventure.com  (http:://axventure.com) which is a local venture specializing in domain monetization.

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