The new domain would offer priority to businesses as well as enhanced security features, and would run in conjunction with the pre-existing co.uk domain, however it would incur a higher fee.
The new .uk domain is being considered by Nominet. “We have been asked over the many years we’ve been in operation as to whether or not we would allow these shorter domain names,” Nominet’s director of operations Elanonr Bradley told the BBC.
“We would do daily malware scanning of these domain names and associated sites and they would be DNSSEC-signed (Domain name System Security Extensions] – that’s a security protocol that adds a digital signature to a domain to minimise the risk of domain-hijacking, and it also ensures that when you are going to go to a domain you reach the one you wanted to reach.”
The new domain would join hundreds of other proposed addresses proposed by Icann (Internet Corporations for Assigned Names and Numbers), such as .shop, .play and .home.
