MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) has allowed Chinese businesses and entrepreneurs to operate Columbia’s .CO ccTLD after four long years, says Neustar, the holding company behind the .CO domain. With this decision, owners of the .CO domain can manage their websites through Chinese servers for a period of five years.
According to Neustar, stern supervision and control policies imposed by the Chinese government restricted Chinese businesses from owning the .CO ccTLD. They claim that the government asked for an MIIT license from every TLD operator to do business in China.
This created an obstacle for many ccTLD and nTLD operators to do business freely with companies and enterprises in China, says Neustar. But after addressing technical concerns and application related matters, Neustar say that they finally received the accreditation of MIIT to operate the .CO ccTLD.
Speaking about this decision, Crystal Peterson, Director of Sales and Marketing for .CO Internet commented:
The final barrier our Chinese .CO domain owners have faced has now been overcome. Domain names ending in .CO are now fully approved in China along with China’s own .CN top-level domain, and other well-known global domains, such as .com and .biz.
Industry experts opine that this decision will see a boost in the registrations for the .CO ccTLD. Explaining this, Jim Zhao, CEO at Startup Salad, commented:
With the full approval of China’s government, startups can host their .CO domains here in China, leading to the fastest possible websites for the online services of tomorrow.