Afilias announced today that Afilias Australia Pvt. Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary located in Melbourne, has been chosen by .au Domain Administration Limited (auDA) to provide registry services in support of Australia’s .AU country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) beginning July 1, 2018. The selection is the culmination of a careful, public Request for Tender process kicked off by auDA on September 1, 2017. Afilias was selected from a wide range of applicants from all over the world.

The selection of Afilias will help fulfill the goals of auDA’s Registry Transformation Project, which aims to further enhance community trust in the .au domain by ensuring the reliability and security of operations as well as the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data. The project also promotes the development of data analytics capabilities within auDA to support compliance and policy development. Technical specifications for the new registry contract were developed in consultation with auDA accredited registrars and the wider Australian internet community and will deliver even higher levels of security and reliability going forward.

Under the agreement, Afilias will establish both primary and back-up registry operations in Australia. Afilias will move its office to Melbourne and expand staffing to both enable 24x7 service to registrars and provide resources to work closely with auDA to further develop the .au namespace. John Kane, Afilias’ Vice President, Corporate Services, will be leading Afilias’ Australian operations from Melbourne.

According to auDA CEO Cameron Boardman, “Afilias impressed us with the thoroughness of their proposal, their clear understanding of the challenges of both a transition of this magnitude and the daily operations, and their track record of partnership in support of the TLDs in their care. We look forward to working with them.”

Afilias’ CEO Hal Lubsen added “Afilias is proud to be trusted with stewardship of the .AU TLD. We are committed to working with Cameron and his team to deliver a smooth transition for registrars and registrants and to support .AU names with a new dedication to reliability and security.”

Afilias already supports 13 other ccTLDs, including .IN (India), which grew from a few thousand names to over 2M names.