If you own a .com.mt domain you have to read this

Friday, September 9th, 2016

As you may know, NIC Malta is the entity responsible for the Maltese country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), a fancy word meaning NIC Malta is in charge of the .com.mt domain.

In a recent proposal brought forward by NIC(Malta) back in June the country domain for Malta will become much shorter… And simpler! The proposal aims to make registration for a .mt domain possible, as opposed to the currently standard and longer .com.mt which we have become accustomed to.

Yes, thats right, .com.mt will now be shortened to just .mt.

Why, you ask? There are four main advantages:

• It’s simpler, yourname.mt is much easier than myname.com.mt
• Not everyone that has a website will use it for commercial purposes. Since the .com technically means commercial, with a simple .mt domain ending the labelling can be more appropriate
• Follows in other country’s footsteps. The UK, for example, shortened .co.uk to just .uk

But what happens if i already own a .com.mt domain?

Should the NIC (Malta) proposal go through, you can buy a simpler yourwebsite.mt domain. However, the ‘old’ .com.mt will still remain operational. In addition, if you already own a .com.mt domain, you form part of a Preferential Registration Period. This basically means that if you own yourwebsite.com.mt, the corresponding yourwebsite.mt will be only available to you.

This period will run for 3 years. During these 3 years, it is being proposed that anyone owning a .com.mt domain can use the corresponding .mt domain for free. After this period however, you can either pay to renew the .mt domain, or release it for others to use.