snicksnack

900,000th .be domain name activated

Today 16 April 2009, saw the 900,000th .be domain name registered with DNS BE.

The 900,000th domain name is artchaud.be, owned by a Flemish artist creating
lithographs and silk-screen prints for expositions. He is the lucky winner of 10 XL
promotion stickers, which he can use to promote his website.

At the turn of the year, there were 860,000 domain names registered, a net growth of
more than 16,7%. The 900,000th domain name being clocked already today clearly shows
that the financial and economic crisis does not withhold the Belgians from
registering their domain names. From all the holders of a .be website 70% is
effectively situated in Belgium. Meaning that hundreds of thousands of Belgians are
clearly familiar with .be domain names.

This year is the tenth anniversary of DNS BE. Its task is to manage and register all
.be domain names: register who registered which domain name, control transfers, but
mainly to ensure that all domain names are accessible. To put it in an easy way: it
is the 'telephone exchange' of Belgium's Internet services.

A short history: Professor Pierre Verbaeten of the Computer Science department of
the Catholic University of Leuven started registering .be domain names in Belgium in
1989. Up to 1994, 129 names were registered. Since then, the number has risen
sharply. At the request of Pierre Verbaeten, the responsibility for the
registration of the domain names for .be was transferred to DNS Belgium, a
non-profit association, which was established for this purpose on 2 February 1999 by
ISPA, Agoria and Beltug.

Press contact: Hans Seeuws : hans@dns.be of 016 28 49 70

http://www.dns.be/pdf/PressRelease-20090416-en.pdf

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ccTLD registration at domainer friendly prices

.de €3.50 / .be € 5.0 / .co.uk €6.20 / .es €6.80 / .nl €6.20 many other good deals.

.CM top level domains for Euro 70 per year.

Alfredo

It's a lot of domains for a "small" country.

fast1

yea i agree

Daniel Dryzek

Yep, with 10 million population the number of registration is huge. The prices of .be domains also helps a lot to achieve such a big number - 1 year fee for the registrars is only 2.50 EUR (excl. VAT).

DD

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Alfredo

Geographical areas. (Only data of users of Belgium - January 2009)

* 69% Flanders
* 17% Walloons
* 14% Bruxellois

70% of the domains are registered by Belgians.

mvl

[QUOTE=Alfredo;3990]Geographical areas. (Only data of users of Belgium - January 2009)

* 69% Flanders
* 17% Walloons
* 14% Bruxellois

70% of the domains are registered by Belgians.[/QUOTE

More interesting for domainers is the fact that such a small country has three official national languages:

60 % Dutch as the first language
40 % French
< 1% German

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