The ZA Central Registry (ZACR), which celebrated its thirty-fourth birthday at the end of July, is marking a new era as it transitions to the ZA Registry Consortium (ZARC).

South Africa’s first registry operator and current administrator of South Africa’s .za domain name system is evolving into ZARC in a strategic move to ensure that the registry elevates to the “next level of excellence”.

ZARC is a re-engineered, consolidated joint venture between ZACR and its technical partner Domain Name Services (DNS), effective October 1, 2022.

ZACR will continue to perform its registry functions until the end of September, after which ZARC will then assume the functions of South Africa’s .za registry operator, bringing a consolidation of a collective 30 years of specialised industry skills, knowledge and expertise.

ZARC is one of the five request for proposal (RfP) .za registry operator bidders published by South Africa’s domain name sector regulator the ZA Domain Name Authority (Zadna) in November.

The other bidders include Lexreg and Fevertree Consulting Consortium; GoDaddy Registry; The Bean App & GMO Internet Group; and Catalytic Peter capital Consortium.

Zadna has been engaged in a procurement process of identifying a service provider to be contracted to provide registry services for co.za, web.za, net.za and org.za second-level domains (SLDs) after issuing a notice of intention, in July 2021, to terminate the 10-year-long Registry Operating Agreement at the end of April.

“As ZACR and DNS have managed the four commercial .za domain name extensions together for over 30 years and believe that the accumulation of skills, knowledge and expertise between these two entities placed them in the best position to jointly apply to Zadna’s RfP, the launch of ZARC now formalises a relationship that has worked to the benefit of the .za namespace,” the ZARC points out.

Further, the new entity switchover will enable the seamless transition and stability of the local namespace as it requires minimum disruption of critical registry services while contractual and/or licensing requirements are resolved.

“Ultimately, we believe that this [transition] would undoubtedly herald a new chapter for the ZA commercial domain name space as ZARC has some exciting innovations to take the local domain name business to the next level of excellence.”

Reflecting back on the significant growth experienced over the past 34 years, when the registry transitioned from Uniforum in 1988 with only 400 domain names, the group’s SLD name registrations, namely co.za, web.za, org.za and net.za, have steadily grown to nearly 1.4-million and remain on the growth trajectory.

“As we usher in the new dawn, handing over the baton to the newly formed consortium ZARC, this new journey will bring forth innovation to the local domain name business, aggressively grow the accredited registrar base, which will translate into the growth of the domain name registration so the .za namespace does not lose its first place status on the continent.”