.co

.co

Introduced	1991
TLD type	Country code top-level domain
Status	Active
Registry	Universidad de los Andes
Sponsor	None
Intended use	Entities connected with  Colombia
Actual use	Used in Colombia; talk of capitalizing on similarity to .com and .co.uk and selling second-level registrations worldwide never materialized
Registration restrictions	Limited to registrants located in Colombia; other restrictions vary by second-level subdomain
Structure	Registration is only permitted at third level beneath various second-level names such as .com.co
Documents	Registration instructions (in Spanish)
Dispute policies	UDRP
Website	nic.co

.co is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Colombia. It is administered by Universidad de los Andes.

"co" is also frequently used as a second-level domain within other country-code domains, in which registrants (usually companies) may register second-level domains of the form .co.xx, where xx is the ccTLD. Indonesia (.co.id), Israel (.co.il), United Kingdom (.co.uk), New Zealand (.co.nz), Japan (.co.jp), South Korea (.co.kr) and Cook Islands (.co.ck) are examples. Some other country codes use "com" instead, such as Australia (.com.au), Mexico (.com.mx) and Taiwan (.com.tw); this includes Colombia itself, which uses .com.co.

Around the year 2000 when many country-code domains were being remarketed as worldwide generic domains, there was some talk of allowing second-level registrations in .co for registrants worldwide in order to capitalize on its similarity to the acronym for the word "company" and as a shortened version of other country-codes as noted above. However, the Colombian Council of State prohibited Universidad de los Andes from doing so, and registration remains limited to third-level domains and to Colombian registrants.

On August 13, 2009, via a public procurement process, the Colombian Ministry of Communications conceded the promotion, administration, and technical operation of the .CO domain for a period of 10 years to a new organization - .CO Internet S.A.S^[1].

Once approved by IANA, ICANN, and the Department of Commerce of the United States, the University of the Andes will transfer the operation of the domain to .CO Internet S.A.S., which in turn will be responsible for implementing new domain policies that are more flexible and adjusted to international best practices.

Arguably, the most important aspect of these new policies is that they create the possibility for second level domain names, such as widgets.co, making the domain more attractive and consequently creating greater market potential, not only in Colombia, but internationally as well.

.CO Internet S.A.S is a joint venture between a Colombian company and NeuStar, Inc.

Second-level domains

The second-level domain structure rather closely mirrors the "traditional IANA" .com / .net / .org / .gov / .edu / .mil hierarchy, with the addition of a national equivalent of .name

• com.co – commercial
• org.co – organizations
• edu.co – educational
• gov.co – government
• net.co – network infrastructure
• mil.co – military
• nom.co – private person

References

External links

• IANA .co whois information

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