Nominet, the governing body of UK domain registrations such as .CO.UK, .ORG.UK, .NET.UK, .ME.UK, .PLC.UK, .LTD.UK and .SCH.UK, has today announced that the new shorter .UK domain extension will hit the market in summer 2014.

The release of .UK will mirror the simpler structure of .COM and most other country code Top Level Domains, representing the biggest change to the .UK domain name space since its inception.

Concerns over whether current .CO.UK owners would have first refusal over equivalent .UK domain extension saw the initial plans of release delayed earlier this year. In Nominet's press release , they confirm:

Over ten million existing .UK customers will be offered the shorter equivalent of their current address, with five years to decide whether they want to use it in addition to, or instead of the domain they already have. In the small proportion of instances where there could be competition – e.g. where one person holds example.co.uk and another holds example.org.uk – the shorter domain will be offered to the .co.uk registrant.

The new shorter .UK extension will be available to purchase at the same price point as the .CO.UK extension and will bring enhanced security elements. You can now pre-order your .UK extension with Tsohost.

This is an interesting time in the UK for domain name extensions, with .LONDON scheduled for release in 2014 (estimated to be released between spring and summer in 2014.) .LONDON is one of the first city domain extensions to be approved by ICANN

.UK, .LONDON and other new TLDs on the horizon provide businesses and website owners with new, exciting opportunities to enhance their web presence

Click here for more info about .LONDON.

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