Registrations of the .ae domain name have increased by 30 per cent this year, with the most being from Dubai, said the country's telecom regulator.

The Telecommunication Regulation Authority (TRA) told Emirates Business it had witnessed growth this year mainly because of the new policy framework and a non-monopolistic environment among registrars.

"In the period [August 2008 to August 2009], the number of new registrations increased by 30 per cent compared to the corresponding period the year before. There are more registrars [no monopoly] providing .ae domain name registration. Customers have the choice to select their registrar as competition leads to better service. The registration process brought online has also made it easier," said TRA.

In fact, during the second quarter in 2009, country code TLDs (ccTLDs) globally rose by 14 per cent year- over-year to 74.4 million domain names.

This represents an increase of one per cent from the first quarter, according to the Q2 2009 Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign, the provider of internet infrastructure services.

Kamal Nasser, CEO of Conservus International, based in Dubai, said: "It's the only way forward. However, unfortunately e-commerce sites are practically non-existent in the region although statistics show more than $1 billion (Dh3.67bn) was spent on e-commerce in Saudi Arabia through purchase of goods from American and European sites."

Conservus is involved in designing and developing a targeted digital advertising medium known as MyConservus Portal. It is also one of the companies in which Intel Capital invested this year.

"Companies in the UAE must register considering it part of their identity," said Nasser.

The second quarter of 2009 globally ended with a total base of 184 million domain name registrations across all of the top level domains. This represents an increase of one per cent over the first quarter of 2009 and a growth of nine per cent in the same quarter of last year.

During the second quarter, country code TLDs (ccTLDs) rose by 14 per cent year-over- year to 74.4 million domain names – a total that represents a rise of one per cent from the first quarter of 2009. The base of ccTLDs domain names was impacted by a loss in base for .cn and .eu. In terms of total registrations, .com remains the most popular TLD category, followed by .cn (China), .de (Germany) and .net. This mix has remained unchanged from last quarter.

The overall base of .com and .net domain names grew to 93.5 million during the second quarter of 2009.

This represents an increase of one per cent over the first quarter of 2009, seven per cent over the same quarter of the previous year and 28 per cent over the second quarter of 2007.

VeriSign's average daily DNS query load during the second quarter increased from 38 billion to 49 billion per day, resulting in hundreds of millions of internet users accessing websites or sending e-mails. This is a 29 per cent increase from the the average of 38 billion daily queries in the first quarter of 2009.

Jill McNabb, in charge of naming services at Verisign said: "Even during times of global recession, registrations for .com domains have increased and the international markets remain significant drivers for internet growth. At the end of the second quarter, there were about 2.7 million domain name registrations across all of the top level domain names [ccTLD and gTLDs]. This represents a two percent growth over the first quarter of 2009."

As seen in past years, there is seasonality in domain name registrations with the second quarter of the year dropping from the first quarter.

In second quarter 2009, the impact of seasonality as well as the overall weak economic conditions impacted the number of new registrations for generic top level domains (gTLD) and ccTLD registrations, though the ccTLD decline was much larger.

.ae is the internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the UAE. It is administered by .aeDA, which is part of TRA.

The .ae domain was originally delegated to internet service provider UUNET. Recognising the domain should be administered in the country, it was transferred in 1995 to etisalat, following a brief period of administration by the UAE University. Since then, etisalat, through UAE Network Information Centre (UAEnic) division, has been responsible for operation of .ae domain.

During 2006, the TRA announced that .ae management and operations would be re-delegated to it from etisalat/UAEnic, the current .ae ccTLD manager.

A new entity called .ae Domain Administration (.ae DA) was formed to take care of management and operations of .ae based on the latest Domain Name System (DNS) and domain registry technologies. During January 2008, IANA(Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) officially re-delegated .ae domain to TRA.

In August 2008, .aeDA took over DNS (domain name system) and launched their services with the new registry system, which supports registry-registrar model. Currently, .aeDA has accredited 15 registrars, including etisalat, from different parts of the world.