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October 2011 marks the month that .IN surpassed the one million registration mark. The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) published the statistics, stating that the 1 million registrations included the second level domains, org.in, ac.in and co.in, as well as the .in domain type.
The growth that is likely to follow is huge, and the number of registrations has actually doubled since November 2009. Although India’s economy has grown substantially in the last decade, the technology infrastructure and economy did not grow at the same rate. India boasts the third highest number of Internet users in the world, with 100 million people online, but this is only a relatively small 8% of the overall population. This is despite over 70% of Indians using mobile phones.
Osama Manzar, founder and director of the Digital Empowerment Foundation in New Delhi, has commented that there is a massive potential for the .IN domain name to experience rapid growth over the coming years, as India has more than 26 million small businesses, 1.5 million schools and a total population of 1.2 billion people.
Manzar also believes that the New TLD Program will offer an excellent platform to grow the number of domain names used across India, and he hopes that the Indian Government will utilise the opportunities resulting from the New TLDs.
“I would be extremely happy if the Indian government applied for .INDIA or .BHARAT, and certainly .PANCHAYAT. It is also being suggested strongly that government get .DELHI, .MUMBAI, .BANGALORE, .CHENNAI, .KOLKATA and .HYDERABAD and open them for the common good, so that they are not commercially exploited.”
Clearly a supporter of the New TLD initiative, Manzar is also involved with the NGO Domain, which has been proposed by the Public Interest Registry who currently manage the .ORG namespace. The TLD is designed for use by Nongovernmental Organisations, and after aggressive campaigning throughout India, Manzar has already amassed 500 NGOs who support the project.
It certainly seems that India are one of many countries that are keen to keep up to date with the developments following the New Top Level Domain Program being approved by ICANN earlier this year. They join the likes of Germany, America, Canada and Greece who are applying for their own Geographical TLDs to put themselves firmly on the map!
Source: domainmonster.com/editorials/in-1million-registrations/
