Dot TK Announces Free Domain Name Registrations Through Hosting Providers, ISPs and Others

BRUSSELS, June 23 /PRNewswire/ -- At the annual European meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the registry of .TK internet domain names, Dot TK, announced today the availability of free domain name registrations through hosting providers, internet service providers and others.

Dot TK's new service, DomainShare, is available for everyone to provide free domain name registrations to others. Dot TK expects that this service will be mostly used by hosting providers and internet service providers that, until now, had to pay for domain names with registries or registrars.

The revenue for these companies are 99% related to server uptime, internet bandwidth and computer storage. "The time that hosting providers made money on domain names is over," says Joost Zuurbier, managing director of Dot TK. "The profit margins of domain names are so low that hosting providers currently see domain sales as a lead generation tool. We will help these companies increase the number of hosting customers by providing .TK domains for free."

Dot TK is the only top level domain registry that offers free domain name registrations. Since 2001 Dot TK has offered free domains on its website - but from today, also through other companies such as hosting providers and ISP's. "This is an incredible change for the hosting community," Zuurbier continues. "Today we have launched a service that makes adding a new domain name as easy as adding a new email address. We are expecting an enormous increase in the number of new domain name registrations. Our systems are ready for it!"

While the internet community at the ICANN meeting in Brussels is discussing the legal aspects of the new top level domain application program allowing businesses and communities to start using their own TLD extension, Dot TK believes that domain names are becoming more and more of a commodity and that it is time to provide free domain name registrations for everyone.

Dot TK is not only providing free domain name registrations but also when a domain is not used or expired, an advertising page is shown. Each view or click on these ad pages will automatically result in revenue for the DomainShare partner and for Dot TK.

Dot TK DomainShare will work with most standard hosting panels and provisioning platforms in the market. On top of that an open API and different registration modules in various languages are available for custom integration. More information can be found at http://domainshare.tk

To prevent domain hijacking, abuse and misuse, domain names registered under the DomainShare program are not legally owned by the registrant, but are licensed under the Dot TK Free Domain User Agreement. This basically means that the registrant of the domain can use the domain as long as he wants, unless the domain name is abused. Domain names that are registered under the DomainShare program cannot be sold or transferred.

Dot TK is a joint venture of the Government of Tokelau, its communication company Teletok and BV Dot TK, a privately held company. Dot TK has offices in the Netherlands, London and Isle of Man. More information about Dot TK can be found at http://www.dot.tk

ICANN is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation which mission is to coordinate, at the overall level, the global Internet's systems of unique identifiers, and in particular to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet's unique identifier systems such as DNS.

SOURCE Dot TK