If you want a Kuwaiti address for your site or your project, the body that decides is not your hosting company but the Communication and Information Technology Regulatory Authority. Under the law that created it, the authority handles the allocation, regulation and management of everything under Kuwait’s country-code top-level domain — the two letters that close the address.
And before you go looking for a name, it helps to know that the extension you want may not be available to you at all.
Seven extensions, each with its own eligibility
The authority lists seven on its page, each with a condition:
- com.kw — for commercial entities officially licensed in Kuwait.
- net.kw — for registered telecoms and IT companies and service providers.
- edu.kw — for educational institutions, public and private.
- org.kw — for private charitable bodies and non-profit organisations.
- gov.kw — for government institutions, authorities and bodies.
- ind.kw — a general domain available to citizens and residents of Kuwait.
- kw on its own — for general use, available to citizens and residents, but the authority writes beside it: “coming soon”.
The distinction that matters to an individual
The last row is the crux. The short bare extension is the one everybody wants, and it is not open yet. What an individual can register today is ind.kw, open to citizens and residents alike.
Which means the owner of a small unlicensed venture has no route to com.kw, because that extension is conditional on an official licence. The route open to them today is the individual extension.
Registration does not happen at the authority
The authority runs and supervises the service, but it does not sell names. Registration goes through its accredited registrars, and the steps as it publishes them are three:
- Check whether the name you want is available.
- Choose one of the accredited registrars to reserve it.
- Upload the required documents and complete payment.
There are five accredited registrars, and the authority publishes their names: Solutions by stc, FASTtelco, B.Online, Gulf Network International (KEMS), and Mada Communications.
Any provider outside that list does not register a Kuwaiti domain for you directly. That is worth noticing before paying any intermediary.
Before you choose the name
The authority also publishes a guide to choosing a domain name, a document setting out best practice in line with its regulations. Reading it before reserving is cheaper than discovering the name is refused after you have uploaded the documents.
Source: the Communication and Information Technology Regulatory Authority, the “kw domain name” page, citra.gov.kw
Photo: Kuwait City, by Zairon, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
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