The government will not charge fees for domain name registrations and pay commissions to vendors, says Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Le Nam Thang. —Photo nganhangtenmien.vn

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — Individuals, enterprises and organisations will be allowed to decide the fees for domain name registration, as the government is set to only charge fees for the use of domain names.

Under the previous system, the government had charged fees for domain name registrations and paid commissions to vendors.

The announcement was made by Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Le Nam Thang. As reported on local technology page ICTnews.vn, the ministry will issue new mechanisms on fees for domain name registrations.

The Deputy Minister asked the ministry's Vietnam Internet Network Information Centre (VNNIC) to cooperate with related authorities to research the management of domain names when the government starts charging only for domain name usage.

"When the government stops charging fees for domain name registrations, domain names for sale will follow the market mechanisms. The issue was addressed at various conferences in which the ministry participated last year," Thang said.

According to statistics from VNNIC, more than 100,000 new domain names ending in ".vn" were registered from the beginning of 2014 to mid-December, raising its total number to more than 297,000. This was a 12.3 per cent increase compared with figures from the same period in 2013.

The domain name ".vn" last year ranked seventh among the top 22 most registered national domain names, according to a list published by the Asia Pacific Top Level Domain Association.

Regarding Vietnamese domain names, by the end of December 15, 2014, 83,330 new domain names were registered, raising the country's total number to more than 983,000 names. More than 17.5 per cent of the total number were actively used. — VNS