The PuntuEUS foundation enters a new era

·      Iñaki Goirizelaia has been appointed as the new chairman of the PuntuEUS Foundation and takes over from Joan Mari Torrealdai

·      As stated in the 2020 Strategic Plan, the mission of the PuntuEUS Foundation is to make the Basque language valid, useful and visible in the digital world through the .EUS domain

·      As a result of the growth the domain has enjoyed, it has been possible to reduce the price:  from 50 euros to 30 euros

It is 10 years since the project to create the PuntuEUS domain was started. The greatest achievement in these 10 years was the actual approval of the .EUS domain in 2013. 2016 was also an important year: having managed to consolidate the domain and make it viable, challenges up until 2020 were identified.

In this context and with the new era in mind, PuntuEUS has renewed its Board of Trustees. So the following organisations now make up the PuntuEUS Foundation’s Board of Trustees: Kontseilua, Euskal Idazleen Elkartea, EKE, ELSE, Euskaltel, Euskaltzaindia, EHU, EITB and the PuntuEUS Association.

The first task of the new Board of Trustees was to appoint a new chairperson, so from now on Iñaki Goirizelaia, as the representative of the EHU-University of the Basque Country, will be the Chairman of the PuntuEUS Foundation. Until now, the chairperson of the PuntuEUS has always been a representative of the Euskaltzaindia (Royal Academy of the Basque Language), firstly Andoni Sagarna and later followed by Joan Mari Torrealdai.

Iñaki Goirizelaia has presented the 2020 Strategic Plan of PuntuEUS which lays down the strategic aims and challenges for the coming years. The mission is to make the Basque language valid, useful and visible in the digital world through the .EUS domain. By developing this mission, the PuntuEUS Foundation is seeking to turn Basque into a first-class language in the digital environment.

We have identified four strategic challenges to turn this into reality:

·       DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT: To strengthen Basque use in the digital environment

·       DOMAIN: To turn the .EUS domain into the number 3 domain in the Basque Country

·       COMMUNITY: To achieve a broader, bigger and more lively community

·       BRAND: To make .EUS the leading reference in the Basque Digital Environment

Price reduction

Since the PuntuEUS domain began to be marketed in December 2014, over 6,300 domain names have been registered. As Josu Waliño, the CEO of PuntuEUS, pointed out, “We owe the growth of the .EUS domain to the involvement and boost of the Basque-language community. From the moment the domain was born we have had a large community providing support and encouragement, and the result is that we are now in a position to reduce the domain price”.

The economic viability of the PuntuEUS Foundation is underpinned by the sale of Internet domains and, as a result, a large number of domains are needed to be able to reduce the price of the .EUS domain. “When the domain was opened to the public, the basic price was 50 euros, which has been kept at that level over the last two years. We have frequently been asked to lower the price and establish a price similar to that of .com, .net and the rest, but that has not been possible until now, because to do that a larger number of registered domain names was needed”.

Now, however, with the help of the community the 6,000-domain hurdle has been overcome; that has allowed the price to be reduced for all users, for new registrations and for those who previously had a .EUS domain name.

From now on the new basic price of the .EUS domain will be as follows:

Registration: €29
Renewal: €35

As Waliño pointed out, one has had to bear in mind that “the final price of the .EUS domain is not fixed by the Foundation. The domain names are sold directly by the Internet registrars and they fix the price that users have to pay.”

To help users make their choices, the price table setting out the prices and services offered by the principal registrars is public and can be checked out on the website.