Register your .com.au – yeah right !!
Posted June 3rd, 2008 by peterWe received a newsletter from Domainz (the name you can trust for .nz domain names- yeah right) today 3 June. Most of us know that Domainz is owned by the Aussies – A company called MelbourneIT
The second lead in the newsletter said this: – Change to .au policy. The policy changes regarding the sale of .au domain names will come into effect on 1st June 2008 (note the date). The story went on to suggest we Kiwis (presuming that is whom the newsletter went too, seeing it was from Domainz) should be protecting our online brand by registering our .com.au name now, because for the first time .com.au domain names can be on sold.
WOW.. That is a change of policy. We read it to mean we now can buy an aussie domain name, without having a registered business in that country? – so I scoured the .au ownership rules (schedule A 2), but the rules of .au domain names had not changed in terms of having to have a registered business there.
To clarify the situation, we rang the domainz 0800 number, waiting for about 10 mins cause "all our operators are busy on other calls", to ask if we could now register a .com.au domain. "Well no" we were told. You have to have a Australian registered business to register a .com.au domain name.
Here is the newsletter we received – the online version. We would be interested to know if you interpreted it differently from us.
Great marketing Domainz. Hope your 0800 number does not get overloaded in the gold rush.
Tags: , .com.au domain names
2 Responses to “Register your .com.au – yeah right !!”
April 7th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
That’s weird! I read the letter you received and it even has the NZ contact details to phone to secure your .com.au domain. We are trying to register the .com.au variant of our site, I wonder if the rules have relaxed? It still looks like you need to be an Australian business.
April 7th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
To register a business name you have to have a ABN number – it has been like that since the Aus registery was first set up in the early 90′s
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