June 24 was the deadline for owners of third-level domains in the British national domain .uk to register corresponding second-level domain names. For a long time, only 3LDs were used in the UK, for instance, example.co.uk or example.org.uk. After opening the registration of 2LDs, the Nominet registry that manages the domain zone, provided a rather long term during which domain owners had the priority right to register the same second-level name (such as example.uk).
According to Nominet’s statistics published by Domain Incite, few used the opportunity: 1.88 million names with third-level equivalents remained unclaimed. About 10 million registrants could initially use this right; however, about one in five didn’t seem to need a second-level domain for one reason or another. Starting July 1, these names will be allocated to registrar companies accredited by Nominet and will become available for registration by anyone.
