August 25, 2006; 02:13 AM
Last week, the Åland Islands country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) .AX
announced that they had become operational. This follows formal approval
of the new ccTLD by the ICANN Board on the 9th of June, 2006 and addition of
the .AX domain to the root zone shortly afterwards.
The Åland Islands (pronounced "OH-land"), is an autonomous province of
Finland, representing a cluster of 6,500 islands located in the Baltic sea
between the mainlands of Sweden and Finland. Its population of 26,200
inhabits 65 of the islands and speaks Swedish as their primary language.
.AX will make the Åland Islands more visible on the Internet.
A comprehensive report on the delegation of .AX can be found at:
http://www.iana.org/reports/ax-report-09jun06.pdf. ICANN is a non-profit organisation responsible for coordinating the
Internet's systems of unique identifiers, including the systems of domain
names and numeric addresses that are used to reach computers on the
Internet. ICANN's mission is to ensure the stable and secure operation of
these unique identifier systems, which are vital to the Internet' operation.
In addition, ICANN coordinates policy development related to these technical
functions through its effective bottom-up consensus model.
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