The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which sponsors .US ccTLD and Neustar, domain's registry, intend to raise the popularity of the domain or so it seems. OnlineDomain reports that two initiatives that would serve this purpose were presented for public discussion. The first one is to allow registration of 1 and 2 character domain names in .US. Short names like this are usually considered premium, they cost a lot more and are very popular among investors. Therefore, the possibility to register such names would not only draw attention to ccTLD of the US but would also allow the registry to improve its financial performance.
Second initiative would allow privacy services to be available when registering a name in .US. This option is also very popular among registrants because it allows not to show direct contact data in Whois. However, according to the rules, only citizens and residents of the country, as well as American companies and organizations or institutions authorized to do business in the US have a right to register domain names in the US ccTLD. Using privacy services potentially allows registrants to violate this rule. However, there is a way to solve this problem. For example, registrants could be forced to give registrars information that would prove they have a right to own domains in a given domain zone, but this data won't be publicly shown in Whois.
US ccTLD exists for over 30 years; however, it didn't manage to become popular in the country. Americans usually consider .COM as “their” domain. Probably the adoption of these new measures will allow changing the situation. The period of public discussion of proposed initiatives will end on January 16th 2017.
