China Makes Aggressive Push for Its Fair Share of the Internet

March 21, 2007; 08:51 AM

EnCirca (http://www.encirca.com), international Registrar for the .cn country-code top-level domain name, announces an 80% price reduction for companies and users residing outside of China.

EnCirca is offering .cn domains for just $7.99, lower than normal pricing for .com domain names. The special promotion applies to a one-year registration of all ASCII-based .cn domains. The promotion will end April 30, 2007. More details can be found at http://www.encirca.com.

"China is determined that its .cn domain will compete with the .com domain name for companies and users striving to conduct business in China," says Tom Barrett of EnCirca. "This promotion will also attract more speculators into the market. If companies and brand owners have not protected all of their trademarks in the .cn domain, now is a good time to do so."

Trademark owners should not assume that their local intellectual property rights will prevail in China, as millions of business start-ups in China are claiming rights to domain names that may be trademarked in other countries. Google is discovering this in its efforts to claim the gmail.cn domain name.

The US$7.99 pricing includes all .cn extensions, including the 34 regional domains. The full list of regional extensions can be found at http://www.encirca.com/updates/cnindex.shtml.

The .cn domain grew over 60% in 2006 to a total of 1.6 million domains, becoming the fourth largest country-specific domain. However, there are still more .com and .net registered domains in China than .cn. This promotion is designed to make .cn the dominant domain for ecommerce in China.

There are no restrictions on who can own a .cn domain name. This special pricing will generate a surge in new registrations for the .cn domain. Companies are urged to act quickly to protect their trademarks, products and service names in the .cn domain name.

About EnCirca, Inc.

EnCirca, Inc., International Domain Name Registrar for the .cn domain, was founded in 2001 and supports many other top-level domains. As an ICANN- Accredited Registrar, EnCirca also supports generic top-level domains, including .travel, .jobs and .pro. For more information, please visit http://www.encirca.com.

Media Contact: Tom Barrett, EnCirca, Inc., [email protected], +1.781.942.9975 (voice), +1.781.823.8911 (fax)