Last month, the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA) of Egypt officially joined the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) as a member. This is an important milestone in the history of the ccNSO: Since its creation 20 years ago, NTRA is the very first manager of an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) country code top-level domain (ccTLD) to join.
The inclusion of an IDN ccTLD in the ccNSO reflects the growing importance of IDN ccTLDs and the increasing recognition of their role in enabling linguistic and cultural diversity on the Internet. It is the result of meaningful work by the ccTLD community, starting with the discussions on IDN ccTLDs in 2006, the launch of the Fast Track Process in 2009 and finally the ICANN Bylaws Amendments in 2022 which enabled IDN ccTLDs to become ccNSO members.
Membership of the ccNSO is open to all ccTLD managers. A ccTLD manager is the organization or entity responsible for managing a ccTLD and listed as such in the IANA Root Zone Database. The ccNSO now counts 174 members, with the ccTLD manager for xn--wgbh1c /مصر as the latest addition.