OCTUBER 2009 | LEGAL REPORT #8
COLOMBIA HAS A NEW ADMINISTRATOR OF ITS COUNTRY CODE TOP LEVEL DOMAIN (CCTLD).

Since State Council judgment issued on December 11, 2001, establishing the State's ownership of the domain name .co, the Ministry of Communications has developed a domain name policy that covers several players, such as, in addition to the Ministry, an entity that will manage the domain name, the existence of registrars accredited by such managing entity to sell the domain name to clients and a policy advisory committee of said Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD).

After a bidding process, the Ministry of Communications of Colombia has selected “PROMESA DE SOCIEDAD .CO INTERNET S.A.S” as the new administrator for the domain name .co. This company has as partners Arcelandia, a Colombian company and Neustar, who manages the domains .us and .biz.

Among the functions that will be assumed by the administrator for the management and operation of the ccTLD .co are the development of activities to position and promote the use of Colombia’s domains (both second and third level), development of a network of Registry Agents, and ensuring adequate support to accredited registrars (procedures, guidelines, training courses and other methods).

According to the terms and conditions for the bidding process of the administrator, it must introduce up to 10 registrars, of whom at least one must be a top 5 registrar in the world according to a Webhosting briefing from the date of the terms and conditions of the bidding process (Go Daddy, Enom, Tucows, Network Solutions, and Melbourne IT).

It is important to note that within the draft of the terms and conditions for the bidding process, the following requirements in order to be accredited as a registrar were included:

- Registrar Agents companies must meet all the ccTLD policy criteria.

- Any foreign company wishing to be accredited as registrar must be accredited by ICANN as registrar and will be enabled provided that it submits all the required documentation and sign a manager –registrar agreement.

- They shall be companies with an adequate financial status.

- They shall be companies that have the skills to become an accredited registrar.

- They shall be companies whose corporate purpose is related to domains sale, design of web pages or content support applications and customer relations through the Web, Internet service providers and enterprises providing Internet site hosting.

- They shall be companies that can provide value added services to .co domain owners. i.e. site hosting and design, management applications supply.

We will have to wait for further information from the Ministry and the administrator in order to clarify the rules to become a registrar for the domain name .co.

In addition, we should note that the policy adopted by the Ministry of Communications by means of Resolution 001652 of 2008, authorizes the registration of second level .co domain (for example, instead of tuboleta.com.co it will be possible to register tuboleta.co) and is expected to go from about 19 thousand current third level domain registered (dominios.com.co) to about 200 thousand domains, since registration will be easier and costs will be lower.

According to Resolution 001652 of 2008, the third level .co domain holder at the time of approval of the policy (July 30, 2008), will be granted the opportunity to buy the second level .co domain before anyone else.

Right now, the new administrator is making the transition with the previous NIC COLOMBIA. Indeed, the Ministry just issued Resolution 2459 of 2009 in which additional rules for the transition period are published. Such transition period begins after the requirements of the contract between the Ministry and .CO INTERNET S.A.S are fulfilled and ends when the new administrator fully assumes its functions.

For more information please contact Mr. Alejandro Moreno Delgado, head of the Telecommunications and New Technologies Legal Practice.