20 August 2016
By Bryan T. Smyth
bryan@TheCork.ie
1,501 .ie domains were registered in Cork in the first half of 2016 (1 January—30 June), according to the latest dot ie Domain Profile Report, published by the IE Domain Registry (IEDR), the Dublin based company responsible for the management and administration of Ireland’s official internet address, .ie.
The figure is a 1% increase on H1 2015. Overall .ie domain registrations in Munster in H1 2016 numbered 3,312, a 3% increase on the same period last year.
A total of 18,179 .ie domains—one hundred a day—were registered in H1 2016. Corporate bodies and sole traders made up 72% of all .ie registrations.
There is now a total of 217,374 registered .ie domains in the IEDR database. This represents an almost 6% increase on June 2015, or a 47.8% increase over the last six years.
David Curtin, Chief Executive of IEDR said:
“Nationally, the .ie domain database continues to grow at a steady rate. Last year, we recorded just under one hundred .ie registrations each day, so it’s encouraging to surpass that in the first half of 2016. Clearly, Irish businesses value .ie’s ‘Identifiably Irish’ brand.
“The increase in registrations in Cork demonstrates this. A website, particularly if it includes e-commerce capability for buying and selling online, can have transformative effects on business growth and revenues.
“However, access to high-speed broadband remains a chronic problem, and continued delays to the National Broadband Plan are keeping households and SMEs offline. Even for those who can access fast internet, digital training resources are lacking in many LEOs and county councils. In the long term, this will only frustrate regional development and hold back the growth of Ireland’s digital economy.
“But, some businesses have no intention of building an online presence. According to our recent Digital Health Index research, a small cohort of SMEs are totally offline and 55% have ‘no intention’ of changing that. This mentality may hamper .ie registrations and e-commerce growth in the future.”
