News

According to the Estonian ccTLD registry about 4000 new .EE domains were registered in July after the ccTLD reform in Estonia started. 

Estonias largest domain name registrar Zone.ee passed along about half of all the registration requests, the other half was divided among 23 accredited registrars. 

The most significant changes the new domain name registration terms have brought are: 

Estonian Internet Foundation (EIS) failed to launch .EE domain reform. Applications which were already submitted are on hold until EIS recovers from problems and opens registry.

Last week we promised to lower the price of EU domains during first three months of new EE domain reform as an alternative for those clients who consider new EE domain too expensive (307,5 EEK + VAT 20%) and registration process too complicated.

We published this information on our social media sites and got immediately very much positive feedback. That motivated us to change our plans a bit and we decided to offer EU domain special prices already from TODAY (June 14th)! Registration fee for one EU domain will be now 74 EEK and 17 cents (89 EEK with VAT).

Special price is available until October 5th  2010, after that EU domain registration will cost again regular price – 104 EEK and 17 cents (125 EEK with VAT).

European top level domain EU was launched in December 2005. There is more than 3 million registered EU domains today. More than 10 000 EU domains have been registered to Estonian companies and private persons, including hundreds of IDN EU domains which were launched in December 2009.

Estonian biggest domain registrar Zone Media (Zone.ee) was the first to announce .EE domain registration retail price and also confirmed signing the registrar agreement with Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF).

EE domain retail price will be from 5th of July 307,5 Estonian kroons (EEK) plus VAT 20 per cent.

„The main component of domain registration is 285 EEK what we as registrar must pay to EIF. As to this significantly high registrar fee we are forced to subsidize EE domain retail price from our other services. If we don’t do this many clients may abandon EE domain,“ explained price evolvement Zone Media chief executive Martti Varik.

Until the beginning of July registration of EE domains is free, but during 6 months transition period which starts on 5th of July almost 80 000 EE domains must be re-registered.

„We want to avoid the registration storm in the beginning of July, but are not able to do that because EIF has not published blocked and reserved domain lists neither domain registration stipulations in second level domains. As these terms are inseparable from domain regulation none of registrants could admit new applications,“ added Varik.

New domain regulation brings many important changes:
• One person can register more than one EE domain (currently limited only to one);
• Private persons can register EE domains (currently limited only for companies);
• Non-Estonian registrants can register EE domains;
• Domain registration will endure one year.

Varik paid attention to the fact that regarding to EIF requirements all registering persons must be identified and therefore ID-card or Mobile-ID with necessary authentication and signing codes and hardware should be available while ordering domains.

Zone Media will lower significantly the retail price of .EU domains during first three months of new EE reform as a solution to those registrants who consider disclaiming EE domains for high price.

Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF) has announced 5th of July as a starting date for new .ee domain regulation. This reform makes .ee domains available for private Estonian and foreign persons plus business and private persons can register several domains.

During this reform EIF will take over the .ee domain administration from EENET who has been .ee domain registry since the launch of .ee domains. EIF has announced the fee of .ee domain for accredited registrars and retail price will evolve on the market for all .ee domains (existing and new). According to new reform domain registration will endure one year and after that it must be renewed.

Domain registration will be available through authorized accredited registrars like Zone Media.

This new regulation will affect also to existing .ee domain owners who will have 6 months transition period. During this time domain holders must choose registrar and renew their domain order.

Zone Media has joined the European Union top-level domain “Code of Conduct” (CoC)  programme for accredited .eu registrars.

Registrars who have subscribed to the Code of Conduct will offer a superior level of service by following the principles outlined in the Code. These registrars are identifiable by the .eu Code of Conduct logo they are allowed to display on their websites.

Why is the Code of Conduct necessary?

• To recognize registrars offering a best in class service;
• To promote accountability within the registrar community;
• To deal with issues that are inherent to the domain name industry but that are difficult to regulate adequately in a legal context;
• To allow the public to make an informed choice when choosing which registrar to work through when registering their .eu domain name.

Zone has acted in accordance to the code for a long time, but officialy subscribing to it will give our customers a feeling of extra security.

Learn more about CoC: www.coc.eu
 

We have upgraded our website and have added a new service category – Virtual Private Servers (VPS).

Virtual Private Servers offer our clients the option of renting server resources in a manner which offers them almost total control over their server instance.

We have tested numerous virtualization solutions extensively and over the past six months have run a private beta period, during which many VPS enthusiasts had the possibility of testing our services.

All feedback from the beta period has been positive.

During the development phase we paid special attention to our technical platform. In addition to the refreshed network infrastructure, VPS services boast a new hardware platform. In co-operation with specialists from Fujitsu, we chose Fujitsu blade servers and Fibre Channel storage devices as our new platform of choice. As a result the speed and performance of VPS services was brought to a whole new level.

VPS services provide a wide variety of possibilities for deployment. Here’s how some of our beta testers have used the service during beta-period: gaming servers, internet radio stations, version control systems and different web stacks (especially Ruby on Rails and Java) have been built upon our VPS servers.

Read more about our Virtual Private Server services:  https://www.zone.ee/en/vps
Order our Virtual Private Server services:  https://www.zone.ee/en/vps/order
 

Terms of all Zone Media services will change from 22nd of May 2010 as a result of new ZoneID user identification system. All new services contracts are available to all our clients on following website: www.zone.ee/en/contracts

When the client does not agree with new terms he or she can end the contract by sending application to our email info@zone.ee no later than 21st of May 2010. If the client hasn’t informed Zone Media about the intention of ending the contract, new terms are considered as accepted.
 

Zone Media has started big project synchronizing its different services databases to make clients lives even more easier. The key factor for this process will be new user identification ZoneID which allows clients to access all their different services using one ID and in the near future Zone will implement more useful features into this system. This new user identification is not new, you can find similar systems around internet like Google Account, Microsoft LiveID, AppleID, YahooID etc.

First step

We joined DATA.ZONE.EE shared hosting and domain registration website WWW.ZONE.EU client databases that all clients can access both services with one same username and password.
ZoneID is easily accessible, login field situates on the top of WWW.ZONE.EE and WWW.ZONE.EU pages alongside ZoneID logo.
If users operate more than one Zone services they can now join all these under one ZoneID user account.  At the moment client must inform about this intention our helpdesk, but in the near future they will be able to do that using website control panel.

Note! Empty ZoneID user accounts will be deleted after few months when no services are attached to these accounts.

Next steps

In the near future we join ZoneID with following client databases:
•WWW.PLANET.EE payable web space
• Web.zone.ee free web space
• Z-POLL, Z-COUNTER and Z-BOOK free extra services

Paying customers’ life will be more simple when we have joined fully automated transaction system – like WWW.PLANET.EE and WWW.ZONE.EU systems have today, but with benefit that all transactions will be joined into one ZoneID. This process will be completed within few months and we make our best that it will be available ASAP.

ZoneID in brief

• Linked ZoneID services need only one username and password.
• Login will be done only one time and to enter other control panel login is not necessary.
• You can choose your own username.
• User can manage their data from one place.
• Transaction information will be in one place, changing data is more easy, finding lost incomes/invoices over many different services is not necessary.
• There will be flexible rights delegation system between ZoneID users.
• Benefits, discounts etc will apply to all used services.
• Possibility to link ZoneID with one or many Estonian ID card so that you need to login only entering ID cards PIN1 code.

Additional information is available via email abi@zone.ee or calling helpdesk 6 886 886 (working days between 9.00-17.00).

<div>Starting 1st December 2009 ZONE.EU will support registration of IDN domain names in the EU top-level domain and will accept applications for the IDN landrush.&nbsp;</div>
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<div>The IDN landrush will begin on December 10th and will allow registrations of domainnames that contain characters from character sets used in the European Union.&nbsp;</div>
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<div>For Estonians this means that chracters like &otilde;, &auml;, &ouml; and &uuml; will be allowed in domain names. Support for IDN will also allow domain names in cyrillic to be registered in the EU TLD.&nbsp;</div>
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<div>Applications received during 1.12.2009 – 10.12.2009 will be forwarded to EURid at landrush launch.&nbsp;</div>
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<p>Further information on the IDN launch is available at <a href=”https://www.zone.eu/kkk/idn”>https://www.zone.eu/kkk/idn</a>.&nbsp;</p>