Nominet has announced its revival plans for the shorter .uk domain names starting summer 2014 enabling organizations in the UK to opt for a shorter ‘name.uk’ domain name in lieu or / addition to the existing ‘name.co.uk’ domain name.
The shorter .uk domain name plans were shelved earlier in a bid to alleviate any confusion; however, after carrying out a second consultation the plans have been revived. The new domains will be made available on a first-come, first-served basis, but all those who own a .co.uk domain will be offered a five-year holding period to decide whether they want to opt for the .uk version or not.
“Over ten million existing .uk customers will be offered the shorter equivalent of their current address, with five years to decide whether they want to use it in addition to, or instead of the domain they already have”, announced Nominet in a press release.
“The five-year free reservation period is designed to help businesses taking up the new domain do so at a time that coincides with when they next change signage or stationary, so they don’t incur unnecessary incremental costs”, Nominet said further.
Customers would be required to shell out £3.50 for a single domain annually, while those opting for multiple domains would only need to pay £2.50 per domain. Nominet has confirmed that existing domain suffixes – .co.uk, .org.uk, net.uk, .me.uk, .plc.uk, .ltd.uk and sch.uk – will remain unaffected.
The effective launch date will be announced in February 2014 and Nominet will be announcing its plans through “a major programme of communication” to ensure that maximum number of people are aware of the changes.
