A little over 200,000 second-level names have been registered in the.AU domain so far, according to a report from Australia's ccTLD Registry auDA. As you are aware, Australian registrants have only lately been able to register such names; before March 24, only third-level domains like.com.au,.org.au, etc. were permitted. Registrants of level 3 domains have until September 20 to claim their priority right to register 2nd level names that are identical to those they already own, such as example.au if the registrant also manages example.com.au.
According to estimates, there are 3.7 million third-level domain names in the Australian country code. Thus, a quick calculation indicates that little more than 5% of registrants have felt the need to register second-level names in addition to their third-level domains already in place. And there isn't much time left to accomplish this. In the coming weeks, it will be interesting to monitor how Australia's ccTLD registrations change. The Domain Incite, which is reporting this news, points out that the habit of using third-level domains is quite powerful and difficult to break. So, in the summer of 2014, second-level domain registration became possible in the UK. The number of second-level domains in the domain zone only accounts for less than 15% of the total number of third-level names, according to the Nominet registry, which manages the.UK domain.
