.NU Domain Ltd., a US-based private corporation, yesterday announced that it is among the first Country-Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) to offer its registrars the new standard Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP). .nu is the ccTLD for a Niue, a Polynesian island located near New Zealand, with a population of 2,000.
According to the company, the implementation of this standard provides registrars the ability to use a single interface for all TLD registries and streamlines integration processes, thus reducing registrars' costs. The Internet organization ICANN, which oversees the Internet's domain name system, now requires all generic top domains, such as .com, .net, .org, to adapt to EPP.
"EPP is a very important standard for the management of domain names as it eliminates manual routines. We believe we can cut our costs for domain names by 10 to 20 percent, which will also benefit .NU Domain customers," said Sam Nurmi, CEO of Sweden's third largest web hotel, Loopia, which has successfully tested .NU Domain's new EPP interface. "Once again .NU Domain is leading the way with a technical solution that is years ahead of Nic-Se."
"Although ICANN has not stipulated that the ccTLDS must adapt to EPP, the expected financial savings will drive the registrar's demand for EPP adoption by all popular ccTLDs," said, William, J. Semich, president of .NU Domain. "The ccTLD registries of Poland .PL and the Netherlands .NL are in the process of implementing EPP."
