Uk-domains will soon be available on the market

Did you know that .uk domains will be available on the market from July 1, 2019? No, that’s what we thought!
If you own domain names registered under the top level domain .co.uk, you may have the right to register .uk domains until 2019-06-25.
So you better hurry up!

Almost exactly five years ago, on June 10, 2014, it became possible to register domain names under the .uk top level domain. During this five-year period, .co.uk domain name holders had priority to register their corresponding domain names directly under the .uk top-level domain. But soon this period will come to an end and these domain names will become available to anyone to register.

So, for you who own domain names registered under the .co.uk TLD may have the preference to register .uk domains until 2019-06-25.

However, there are no guarantees, and everything depends on how long you have owned them.

Some of you readers may wonder why most people have not already registered .uk as a top-level domain. But the thing is that until recently, only a few organizations and government agencies have been allowed to lie directly under the .uk top-level domain, for example parliament.uk and police.uk.

Here is a division of subdomains in the UK:

• uk– academic colleges and research establishments
• .co.uk– commercial and general
• .gov.uk– government (central, devolved and local)
• .ltd.uk– limited companies
• .me.uk– general use (usually personal)
• .mod.uk and .mil.uk – armed forces and Ministry of Defence establishments and systems
• .net.uk– ISPs and network companies (unlike .net, use is restricted to these users)
• .nic.uk– network use only (Nominet UK)
• .org.uk– general use (usually for non-profit organisations)
• .plc.uk– public limited companies
• .sch.uk– local education authorities, schools, primary and secondary education, community education

Owners of domain names with these top-level domains may also have priority.

So, Dotkeeper’s advice is that, if you who have domain names under any of these top-level domains, as soon as possible register the corresponding domains directly under the top-level domain.

You don’t want to risk that a third part register before you!

Although most of the people in the UK use, for example, the .co.uk top-level domain, it will ultimately be more attractive to own a two-letter top-level domain like .uk. Since it’s “short and sweet” it will probably eventually become one of the major top-level domains, while at the same time .co.uk and the other subdomains are phased out.