.ma is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Morocco (French: Maroc). A local registrar with a local Moroccan company as administrative contact is needed to register an .ma or .co.ma domain name. Further restrictions are imposed on the registering of other second-level domains (such as .net.ma or .gov.ma).
History
In 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) approved a request for delegation of the .ma ccTLD for administrative and technical contact to Ecole Mohammadia d'Ingénieurs.
In 1995 the technical management of the .ma domain was taken over by Maroc Telecom is still the (not formal) technical maintainer.
On 12 May 2006 IANA redesignated the administrative and technical contact for the domain, and made ANRT (Agence Nationale de Réglementation des Télécommunications) the only official registrar for the .ma ccTLD.
Within some years the ANRT will request the market to bid on a "Technical maintainer" license which is valid for five years. The new party will get 12 months to implement a provisioning system based on Extensible Provisioning Protocol. Automatic provisioning of .ma domains cannot be expected until 2013.
March 2015 the ANRT takes official control of .ma and launches new automatic provisioning.
Practical information
- Total hosts of .ma: 277,338 (2012)
- Total internet users in Morocco: 19,021,000 (2016)
- Total ADSL connection in Morocco: 550,000 (2007)
Second-level domains
Registration can be done directly at the second level, or at the third level beneath these names:
- المغرب.: Arabic Right-to-left TLD for Morocco, General use
- .ma: General use
- net.ma: Internet providers
- ac.ma: Educational institutions
- org.ma: Organizations
- gov.ma: Governmental entities
- press.ma: Press and publications
- co.ma: Commercial entities
Second top-level domain
A second top-level domain will be used for Morocco intended for domain names in the local language using Arabic characters. The string المغرب. has been registered and approved for this purpose, and was delegated to Morocco in April 2011,but it is not yet active (2015) and second level domains have not been granted yet.
References
External links
- IANA .ma whois information
- ANRT Registry website
