.frl Pre-Register Domain - .frl Domain Information

Friesland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friesland) is one of the most northern provinces of The Netherlands. The people of Friesland refer to themselves as Frisians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisians), and are a very independent and close-knit community. The Frisians have their own (internationally recognized) language, which is recognized as an official language both in The Netherlands and in Germany. All towns, villages and communities have a Dutch name and a separate Frisian name that is shown on road signs and official maps.

Friesland is governed by the Provincie Fryslân, which is the official governing body of this province. The Provincie Fryslân first started plans for its own TLD as early as 2006, but due to political issues and changing political landscape this TLD still has not been realized. Together with SIDN, the Provincie Fryslân has conducted an extensive study of the potential for a Top-Level-Domain name in Friesland. The study focussed mainly on governments and businesses in Friesland, and concluded that there is a market for at least 40.000 domain names there. If we add to this the potential consumer market, we see a business case for 100.000 domain names in Friesland.

In december 2011 the Provincie Fryslân started a public tender for the .FRL gTLD, and Metaregistrar entered this tender. From all the parties, Metaregistrar was willing to take full responsibility for both the application and the funding, and was selected as preferred partner by the Provincie Fryslân.

During the years that an own TLD for Friesland was in the making, several alternatives were considered: .FRIESLAND (but that is Dutch language, not Frisian), .FRYSLAN (but that would need an accent on the A) or .FRYSLÂN (that would be an IDN application, which would make e-mailing difficult for many people in The Netherlands). From the alternatives, FRL was selected, because many Frisians already identify themselves with an FRL sticker on the backs of their cars, and within The Netherlands, FRL is widely recognized as short for Friesland.

According to ISO3166-2, the official code for Friesland would be NL-FR. However, both NL and FR are already taken as 3166-1 country codes, and NLFR would not be a tld that speaks to the heart of the Frisians because it still starts with NL.

The .FRL domain extension is targeted at Frisian people living in Friesland, Frisians living in other part of the Netherlands, and Frisians living abroad and wanting to identify themselves with the Frisian culture and heritage.

This means that the FRL top-level domain will serve the Frisians not only in the province (between 600.000 and 700.000 people), but also the Frisians that have moved into the rest of The Netherlands or abroad. Also, the northerns parts of Germany have a Frisian community that strongly identifies with the Frisians in The Netherlands. The general feeling is that people from Friesland will stay Frisian for their whole lives, and are very willing to identify themselves with anything coming from Friesland.

The Netherlands are populated with about 17.000.000 people, and the .NL registry holds almost 5.000.000 second-level domain names. If we extrapolate these numbers to the Frisian population, we can expect conservatively 100.000 second-level registrations, but 200.000 registrations would be very possible from the inhabitants of Friesland alone. And that is not counting the Frisians living in other parts of the Netherlands or Frisians living abroad. Add this to the fact that most Frisian names have 3 means of spelling: Dutch spelling, Frisian spelling without accents and Frisian spelling with accents, this all adds up to a very valid business case for a gTLD.

When enough Frisians adopt a .FRL domain name, this TLD will serve as glue between the Frisians living in Friesland and the Frisians living elsewhere, giving the people living abroad a means to visually identify themselves with the Frisian community in Friesland.

An additional benefit to using a .FRL tld is the use of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). The Frisian language contains many words that require special characters to be spelled correctly. For example, the government of Friesland is reachable under www.fryslan.nl, however the correct spelling would be fryslân.nl. Since SIDN has not rolled out IDN support yet, this domain name is not possible. With the use of new gTLDs, the province will be able to register the domain name fryslân.frl. We expect a boost in websites that feature the Frisian language, and many website owners wanting to register not only the IDN variant but also the variant without special characters, if only to be able to send and receive e-mail correctly.

The whois services of the FRL registry will adhere to the Dutch privacy laws. This means that for the public whois services only a limited amount of data will be shown. Any party having a legitimate right to all the whois information will be able to contact the registry and gain access to the private whois service. Connected registrars will also have access to the private whois service to enable them to execute the domain transfer policies correctly.

The web-based whois service will show more information than the publicly available port 43 whois, but will be protected with a captcha to prevent harvesting of data.

Registration of .FRL domain names will be open and unrestricted to any ICANN-accredited registrar. There are no intentions to restrict registration to people originating from Friesland only, because many Frisian people live in other parts of The Netherlands or Germany or have moved abroad. It is these people we want to give the chance of identifying with the Frisian community by registering a .FRL domain name.

As stated in the ICANN policies, all names like example.frl, www.frl, iris.frl, nic.frl and whois.frl will be reserved in the domain name system, as all the names of countries and territories that are specified in the ICANN newGtld documentation. Domain names with hyphens are allowed, but no two hyphens may be next to each other in a domain name. This way, domain names starting with xn—will not be accepted by the registry.

Numbers in domain names are allowed. Domain names can start or end with any number.
All 1 character and 2-character domain names are reserved, and can only be released after ICANN approval.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) will be allowed, but only the characters that relate to the Frisian and Dutch languages. Since no character table exists in the IANA tables with that specification, a new table will be added.

In addition to this, all names of Frisian villages and cities will be reserved, where necessary in three variants: Dutch language, Frisian language and Frisian language with special characters. We are working together with the Frisian Academy for a exhaustive list of names. Together with the Province Fryslân we will encourage all local governments to claim their domain name(s), we will use an external party to verify those claims.

Every domain name can be registered for a period of 1 to 10 years. At this time, no discount pricing has been established for registrations longer than 1 year.

The sunrise and landrush stages will be performed as follows:
1. Sunrise for trademark holders and companies
Any party holding a trademark or registered name will be able to apply for domain names in the .FRL gTLD. Each claim will be checked and verified by an external party, capable of verifying these claims. Whenever a claim is approved, the trademark holder will receive an authcode for that specific domain name.
We do not expect many trademark holders wanting to claim a domain name in this period of time, so multiple applications for the same domain name will be handled on a first-come first-serve basis. That is, after the documentation supporting the claims have been verified.
At the same time, all companies and institutions will receive a letter with their company domain name that can be claimed. This will raise awareness with the new TLD. The companies and institutions can use the authcode in that letter to register their domain name. If they want to register more domain names, they will have to use the next sunrise (for the Frisian community) or the open registration (landrush) period.


2. Sunrise for the Frisian community
Worldwide acceptance of the .FRL tld will stand or fall with acceptance by the Frisian community itself. We have agreed with the Provincie Fryslân that the FRL registry will supply all addresses in Friesland with discount codes to pre-register a domain name. Each physical address will receive 2 discount codes: one for themselves and one to use for a relative or friend abroad. This way we will raise the awareness of .FRL existence, and let all people in Friesland (and Frisians abroad) know that this extension is available for registration. The discount code will give a discount of at least 50% on the regular domain name price.

The discount codes will be accepted by the EPP server of the registry, and can be used by any ICANN accredited registrar approved and connected to the .FRL registry. We will encourage people asking for the .FRL extension with their local domain name provider, because every extra selling point of domain names will benefit the whole .FRL registry.

Multiple registrations for the same domain name will be handled on a first-come first-served basis.

3. General availability
After the Frisian pre-registration, registration will open up without use of coupon codes. No restrictions are imposed on the registrants; anyone will be able to register a .FRL domain name.

Multiple registrations for the same domain name will be handled on a first-come first-served basis.

Since the Frisian community and the Provincie Fryslân are strong supporters of the independent Frisian language, our sister company Mijndomein.nl has plans to open a domain name registration page in the Frisian language.

The Provincie Fryslân has already opened a page on their website to ask the Frisian people if they are willing to register a FRL domain name, and the name of their registrar. This information will be used by the registry to actively contact the Frisian domain name registration and hosting companies and get them connected with the Frisian Top-Level domain either with their own ICANN accreditation or via a reseller agreement with one of the connected registrars.

The registry is already in contact with the (currently 9) ICANN accredited registrars in The Netherlands, and has received several intentions to connect with the registry and sell FRL domain names.

Multiple requests for the same domain name will be handled on a first-come, first-served basis. Since the FRL registry will become and stay a relatively small registry, we do not expect many problems in this area. Where problems arise with multipe parties wanting the same domain name, the legal personnel of the registry will solve these issues together with the parties involved.


Domain name pricing
The Provincie Fryslân has produced an extensive report on the FRL tld in 2011, stating that with a price of EUR 40 for a domain name, it would be possible to register 40.000 domains, and have a valid business case. However, this plan did not include the large consumer market in The Netherlands, consumers that are accustomed to much lower prices per domain name than 40 euro.

To accommodate the consumer market, the registry will start pricing at EUR 15,- per domain name. This will allow ICANN-accredited registrars to set their pricing at 20 - 30 euro, acceptable for consumers and businesses alike. With the Provincie Fryslân an agreement has been proposed, that on higher numbers of registrations the price will automatically drop, to a minimum of EUR 2,50 per domain name when total numbers of registrations hit 800.000 or more. Price increases are not expected. If a price increase would be deemed necessary, ICANN will be notified and asked for permission, as well as timely notification to all registrars that are connected to the registry. There are no specific plans for price increases. We are convinced that the 100.000 domain names in our plan is very well achievable, and that there is a high probability that domain name registrations will exceed 100.000 domains. At that point prices will drop, and not increase. There are no commitments to registrants about price escalation, only a commitment to the Provincie Fryslân about price decreases.

Together with the Provincie Fryslân a plan has been made to address all Frisian companies and citizens. In the first stages the sunrise (where trademark holders can apply) all companies that have a head office in Friesland will receive a letter from the Province that a top-level domain name can be registered for their company. This letter will contain a domain name for the company, and a authorization code to register specifically that domain name. The auth code is not bound to a specific registrar.

In the second stage, where all Frisians can apply, we will send letters to all Frisians and companies in Friesland with discount / auth codes. These codes will allow registration of Frisian domain names at a discount price (5,00 euro per domain name). The discount codes are not bound to a specific registrar.
When letters with discount codes are sent to the addresses in Friesland, these codes will allow any ICANN-accredited registrar to pay only EUR 5.- per domain name (the discount is part of the marketing costs/budget). When the ‘Frisian sunrise' is over and the general landrush has arrived, the normal price of EUR 15 per domain name will apply. In this phase, discount codes will still be accepted, and will still only charge EUR 5,- for a domain name to the ICANN-accredited registrar during the first year.

he FRL registry will reserve all country-specific domain names that are indicated in the ICANN documentation. However, we do not expect any country (except the Dutch government) to be interested in a domain extension that is so specifically targeted at a province of The Netherlands.

The registry will reserve all names of Frisian cities, communities and villages. Together with the ʹFrisian Academyʹ, a specialist in the Frisian language, we have compiled and publishad a comprehensive list, in three ways:
- In the Frisian language, with IDN (e.g. feanwalsterwâl.frl or xn--feanwalsterwl-teb.frl)
- In the Frisian language, but without accents or special characters (e.g. feanwaldsterwal.frl)
- In the Dutch language (e.g. veenwoudsterwal.frl)

This list of reserved community, city and village domain names can be found at
http://metaregistrar.com/reserved-community-domain-names/

All these names will be added into the registry administration as ‘reserved'. A list of reserved names will be published as general accessible document on the website of the registry.
In the early sunrise phase, all cities and villages will receive notice about the opportunity to register their name with the .FRL registry. They will be able to register through any ICANN accredited registrar, provided that this registrar has entered into an agreement with the FRL registry.

Whenever a claim is made on a reserved domain name, the registry will use an independent law firm to check the claim on its validity. Every valid claim will give the authorities the choice of the 3 different domain names mentioned before.
Every authority that has succesfully claimed a domain name from the reserved list will receive an authcode for every claimed domain name. With this authcode the domain name can be registered through any ICANN-accredited registrar. The authcode will work only for the domain name it was issued to.


Upon a domain check, the reserved names will return the status string ‘reserved'. When the whois information is checked, these reserved names will not display whois information, nor will they be added to the DNS zone.

Protection of geographic names at the second level.
All geographic names specified by ICANN in specification 5 of the draft registry agreement will be listed as reserved and can only be registered through a special procedure.
A list of reserved country names can be found at http://metaregistrar.com/reserved-country-domain-names/
Any country-specific domain name that is brought to our attention by the GAC, and has passed GAC internal procedures, will be added to the list of reserved domain names, published on our website.

The ICANN specification 5 also mentions "the list of United Nations Member states in the 6 official languages of the United Nations". To reserve these names will technically not be possible, since many of those names (russian, chinese) contain characters that are not supported by the registry. They cannot be registered with the FRL registry anyway.

Since this TLD is targeted at a specific part of a small country, we expect very little interest for country-named domain names. Even with a very large registry like .INFO many country names are still reserved. And many countries have no interest in the English version of their country name.

Any country or region interested in obtaining their own domain name that is on the reserved list, will first have to be approved by the GAC and ICANN. Only after these approvals the second-level domain name will be released to the requestor.