.uk Top Level Domain - Registry and Registration Info
UK United Kingdom ccTLD
.uk
About
Country code domain for the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Wales, Scotland) and Northern Ireland introduced in 1985. Name registrations are made at the third level below second level domains.
Names are not normally registered directly with Nominet, although it is possible, but through a Nominet member and tag holder. Only buying through members with preferential pricing is the normal user able to register and renew at the low price that has made the .uk the fourth most popular TLD (after com, de and net) for total number of registrations. As of mid 2007 there were in excess of six million registrations
Second Level
- .co.uk - Commercial entities (Open third level)
- .org.uk - Associations, groups, not for profits and others (Open third level)
- .me.uk - Individuals (Must be registered to a person and not a business or group)
- .gov.uk - Government Admin Institutions (Restricted)
- .nhs.uk - National Health Service (Restricted)
- .ac.uk - Academic Institutions (Restricted)
- .mod.uk - Ministry of Defence (Restricted)
- other restricted domains
The .co.uk, despite being a second level domain has proved to be popular with UK business entities and individuals for their websites and although many companies will hold both the .com and .co.uk versions of their names a lot choose to develop their web presence at the .uk address. There are no restrictions on .org.uk and .co.uk registrations which have made it an affordable UK web presence for people and companies from outside the national borders. Nominet, a not for profit organisation, came into existence in the mid 90s to deal with the increasing demand for registrations, which was becoming too great for the individuals and Naming Committee who had been responsible for approving new additions up until that point. Although names may be easily registered the transfer process is still somewhat cumbersome and paper form based. At the time of writing (Aug 2007) a transfer fee of £11.75 is levied for change of ownership details on a single domain name.
Registry History
May 1996 : Nominet http://www.nominet.org.uk
TLD introduced 1985
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