Vietnam: How to register “.vn” domain?

According to Circular No. 24/2015/TT-BTTTT of the Ministry of Information and Communications of Vietnam, the “.vn” domain registration shall be made on the principle of equality, non-discrimination and “first come, first served” basis with the following exceptions:

- Domain names that fall within the scope of protection priority under the provisions of Clause 1 Article 8 hereof;

- Other domains to be auctioned in accordance with regulations laid down by the Ministry of Information and Communications.

Besides, Circular No. 24/2015/TT-BTTTT also stipulates that domain names shall be optionally selected by organizations or individuals to serve the purpose of registration, but must meet the following requirements:

- Do not contain words or phrases intruding upon the national sovereignty, interest and security, or violating social ethics, fine traditional customs and values;

- Be clear, serious and avoid causing any confusion or misunderstanding by abusing polysyllabic and polysemantic attributes and omitting accent marks in Vietnamese language;

- Have at least one or a set of character(s) forming lower-level domain names below top-level domain “.vn”;

- Allow alphabetical characters ranging from a to z, numerical characters ranging from 0 to 9 and Vietnamese symbols defined in the table of Vietnamese letters, and all characters and symbols accepted by a network of domain name servers. Lowercase or uppercase letters and symbols do not matter;

- Allow the hyphen mark "-" but do not begin or end a domain name with this symbol and do not use two hyphens placed next to each other in a domain name;

- For each level of a domain name, limit 63 letters and symbols (with regard to Vietnamese domain names, the number of characters is counted depending on the length of the set of characters after being converted into unaccented ASCII characters);

- As for domain names below “.name.vn”, ensure that these domain names are personal names or words attached to personal names such as personal first names, middle names, birth places and birth dates (all of these letters combined bear the meaning of personal names of individuals applying for domain registration).

More details can be found in Circular No. 24/2015/TT-BTTTT of the Ministry of Information and Communications of Vietnam, which takes effect from October 10, 2015.

Le Hai

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