# .nu
**.nu** is the [country code top-level domain](https://www.edgepedia.org/country-code-top-level-domain) (ccTLD) assigned to Niue, delegated by IANA on 20 June 1997 and today administered technically by the Swedish Internet Foundation from Stockholm.[1](https://www.iana.org/whois?q=.nu) Although it belongs to a jurisdiction of roughly 1,200 people, the domain was used overwhelmingly by outsiders in its early market: the syllable "nu" means "now" in Swedish, which made it attractive beyond Niue.[2](https://brownpoliticalreview.org/new-power-in-name-alone/) • [3](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/11/02/1082798/tiny-pacific-island-global-capital-cybercrime/) That mismatch between the domain's nominal owner and its actual market has produced a governance dispute that has run since 2003.[4](https://nic.gov.nu/story/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Delegation | Created 20 June 1997; status ACTIVE; administrative contact The IUSN Foundation, Alofi, Niue; technical contact the Internet Infrastructure Foundation, Stockholm[1](https://www.iana.org/whois?q=.nu) |
| Why it grew | "Nu" means "now" in Swedish and "new" in other Germanic languages; more than 80% of the business was in Sweden by the early 2000s[2](https://brownpoliticalreview.org/new-power-in-name-alone/) • [5](https://wifination.nu/news/on-a-tiny-island-catchy-web-name-sparks-a-battle/) |
| Zone size | About 66,000 registrations in 2000; 500,000 at the 2017 peak; 194,097 in the 2026 Internet Society Pulse report[6](https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/prdocs/2000/wipo_pr_2000_211.html) • [7](https://www.afnic.fr/en/observatory-and-resources/expert-papers/ai-io-and-tv-and-their-surprising-stories/) • [8](https://pulse-dev.internetsociety.org/en/reports/nu/) |
| Registry operator | Stiftelsen för Internetinfrastruktur (The Swedish Internet Foundation), an independent public interest foundation in Stockholm, since 2013[9](https://internetstiftelsen.se/app/uploads/2021/10/nu-terms-and-conditions-2021-11-01.pdf) • [10](https://www.wired.com/story/the-digital-colonialism-behind-tv-and-ly/) |
| DNSSEC | 57% of .nu domains signed, against a 1% Oceania average; the zone publishes a DS record (key tag 41209, algorithm 13)[8](https://pulse-dev.internetsociety.org/en/reports/nu/) • [1](https://www.iana.org/whois?q=.nu) |
| Dispute | Niue's government has sought redelegation since 2003 and filed a 2020 IANA redelegation request; litigation in Stockholm is reported both as pending and as decided in the foundation's favor in March 2024[4](https://nic.gov.nu/story/) • [11](https://staging.icannwiki.org/.nu) |
## What .nu is and why it took off
IANA delegated the two-letter code .nu in 1997.[1](https://www.iana.org/whois?q=.nu) Its commercial value came from coincidence rather than geography. In Swedish, "nu" means "now", so names like "buy.nu" or "news.nu" carried a meaning that a Pacific island code would not suggest.[2](https://brownpoliticalreview.org/new-power-in-name-alone/) • [3](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/11/02/1082798/tiny-pacific-island-global-capital-cybercrime/) In the late 1990s an American businessman, William Semich, obtained ICANN approval to operate the registry at no fee, when a new dot-com address cost $100 to register for two years, and spent about $100,000 on servers and equipment to launch it as a catchy alternative to dot-com for companies outside Niue.[5](https://wifination.nu/news/on-a-tiny-island-catchy-web-name-sparks-a-battle/)
## History and delegation
The operating structure that emerged was unusual. The Internet Users Society (IUSN), a non-profit registered in Delaware, ceded management of Niue's ccTLD to a for-profit Delaware company, .NU Domain Ltd (NDL), headed by Semich.[12](https://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-t/workshop/cctld/cctld057.pdf) A 2000 WIPO press release described the arrangement as it then stood: the .NU top-level domain was administered by .NU Domain Ltd. under agreement with the IANA-designated delegatee, the Internet Users Society-Niue (IUS-N), and held about 66,000 domain name registrations.[6](https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/prdocs/2000/wipo_pr_2000_211.html)
Growth was driven by Sweden. More than 80% of the business was Swedish, prompting a Stockholm sales and marketing office; by the early 2000s about 110,000 .nu names existed at $30 per year with a two-year minimum.[5](https://wifination.nu/news/on-a-tiny-island-catchy-web-name-sparks-a-battle/) In 2000 Niue's Parliament passed the Communications Amendment Act 2000 (no 251) addressing the ccTLD, affirming that .nu is a national resource "for which the prime authority is the Government of Niue"; the operator did not cede control.[4](https://nic.gov.nu/story/) • [10](https://www.wired.com/story/the-digital-colonialism-behind-tv-and-ly/) In 2013 the licensing of .nu was transferred to the Swedish Internet Foundation, which manages Sweden's native .se and directly sells .nu domains.[10](https://www.wired.com/story/the-digital-colonialism-behind-tv-and-ly/) IANA's current record reflects that structure: The IUSN Foundation remains the administrative contact in Alofi, with the technical function at the Internet Infrastructure Foundation in Stockholm.[1](https://www.iana.org/whois?q=.nu)
## Governance and the Niue relationship
**Formal accountability.** On 22 January 2008, ICANN signed an Accountability Framework with Internet Users Society Niue (IUS-N), the ccTLD manager for .nu, covering the manager's obligations to ICANN, including dispute resolution and termination provisions.[13](https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/icann-formalizes-relationships-with-cctld-manager-for-niue-22-1-2008-en) Under the underlying commercial arrangement, NDL pays IUSN approximately US$200,000 per annum in return for exclusive management rights, but the for-profit NDL retains control over the majority of revenue generated from the sale of .nu domain names.[12](https://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-t/workshop/cctld/cctld057.pdf)
**What Niue received.** The operator's side of the ledger included connectivity and charitable spending. Semich's company, with annual revenue in the low single-digit millions, donated 15% to 30% to a charitable arm developing the internet on Niue, funding an internet café, towers, a cyclone-proof building, and a telecom link to New Zealand; by June 2003 the company offered Niue's roughly 1,200 citizens free wireless internet, making Niue the first nation with free nationwide wireless internet access.[5](https://wifination.nu/news/on-a-tiny-island-catchy-web-name-sparks-a-battle/) In 2003, IUSN was paying Telecom Niue a monthly fee of $10,000 for a 64K frame relay link to the New Zealand internet backbone—a service that, according to IUSN, would have cost just $20 within New Zealand.[14](https://wifination.nu/news/thorns-in-paradise/)
**The contest.** Niue's government tells the story differently. It states that the US-based IUSN has acted as manager of .nu since 2000 without the consent or approval of Niue's government, that six consecutive elected Niue governments from 2000 to 2013 declined to accept IUSN as manager, and that the Swedish Internet Foundation took over management in 2013 without Niue's consent.[4](https://nic.gov.nu/story/) By the 2003 WSIS Geneva phase the government was formally seeking redelegation, citing repeated refusals by the manager to provide accountability and transparency, and noting that IUSN had assigned marketing and sale of .nu registrations to .NU Domain Limited with no accountability for the revenue generated.[15](https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/geneva/coverage/statements/niue/nu.pdf) In 2003 Niue's telecom minister Toke Talagi shut the free service off for government workers and asked ICANN to transfer the domain to the Niue government, accusing the operators of "neo-colonialism".[5](https://wifination.nu/news/on-a-tiny-island-catchy-web-name-sparks-a-battle/) In 2019 Niue filed a lawsuit in Stockholm, and in 2020 it submitted a request to ICANN for revocation and redelegation of .nu to Top-Level Domain Management AB.[4](https://nic.gov.nu/story/) A structural obstacle remains: IUSN, the current ccTLD manager, has not given consent to the redelegation request.[16](https://dig.watch/updates/government-niue-files-redelegation-request-nu)
**Litigation status.** The record here is contested. Niue's registry site states that a lawsuit is pending in the courts of Stockholm.[17](https://nic.gov.nu/) ICANNWiki reports that Niue sued in Stockholm District Court seeking roughly 20 million US dollars in damages and that in March 2024 the court ruled in favor of Internetstiftelsen, holding that a foundation cannot be liable for damages under the applicable rules.[11](https://staging.icannwiki.org/.nu) Niue's designated successor registry has partnered with Tucows Registry as technical backend while guaranteeing existing .nu domain holders continuity, with technical and administrative management remaining in Europe.[17](https://nic.gov.nu/)
## Registration rules and market
Under the registry's 2021 terms and conditions, Stiftelsen för Internetinfrastruktur (The Swedish Internet Foundation, organization number 802405-0190, Box 92073, 120 07 Stockholm) is the independent public interest foundation responsible for the .nu registry.[9](https://internetstiftelsen.se/app/uploads/2021/10/nu-terms-and-conditions-2021-11-01.pdf) Registration applications are open to any individual or organization that possesses either a personal identification number or a corporate identity number, or that a governmental body or state-authority-exercising organization can identify through a registration designation in its records; applicants from abroad may supply unique identification information in place of these numbers.[9](https://internetstiftelsen.se/app/uploads/2021/10/nu-terms-and-conditions-2021-11-01.pdf) The terms were reissued as of 15 January 2026, continuing the same foundation as registry operator.[18](https://support.registry.se/file.php/3143255ZGHZBNPQWGTGTBA0PD/nu-terms-and-conditions-2026-01-15-eng.pdf?access_token=tgjsp5-cqexybtocb-5aabad429af1f8a00f0581492383e9def07025a3) The IANA record points registration information to internetstiftelsen.se and the registry whois to whois.iis.nu.[1](https://www.iana.org/whois?q=.nu)
## By the numbers
The zone's trajectory tracks the Swedish market it serves. From about 66,000 registrations in 2000[6](https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/prdocs/2000/wipo_pr_2000_211.html) and roughly 110,000 in the early 2000s,[5](https://wifination.nu/news/on-a-tiny-island-catchy-web-name-sparks-a-battle/) .nu reached the 500,000-name mark at its peak in 2017 under the Swedish registry IIS, rivalling Sweden's own ccTLD .se, before entering a decline that followed the same trend as .se.[7](https://www.afnic.fr/en/observatory-and-resources/expert-papers/ai-io-and-tv-and-their-surprising-stories/) The 2026 Internet Society Pulse report counts 194,097 registered .nu domains.[8](https://pulse-dev.internetsociety.org/en/reports/nu/) A 2003 report put Niue's population at roughly 1,200; the historical figure of more than 80% of registrations from Sweden is the best-documented geographic split.[5](https://wifination.nu/news/on-a-tiny-island-catchy-web-name-sparks-a-battle/)
## How it compares with .tv, .cc, and .ws
.nu belongs to a group of small-island ccTLDs repurposed as open global domains in the late 1990s. The outcomes diverged sharply. Tuvalu reclaimed .tv and sold licensing rights to Verisign, which pays Tuvalu about $5 million per year under the deal signed in 2011, a substantial sum for a nation whose annual domestic revenues hover around $60 million; .tv reached about 512,000 registrations, and Verisign's .cc (Cocos Islands) has nearly 700,000.[10](https://www.wired.com/story/the-digital-colonialism-behind-tv-and-ly/) • [19](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/tuvalu-is-a-tiny-island-nation-of-11000-people-its-cashing-in-thanks-to-twitch/) By 2000, Niue, Tuvalu, Tonga, and the Cocos Islands had all contracted with private companies to market their surplus addresses, in deals that netted millions of dollars used to fund schools, medical care, and subsidized satellite internet access; eNIC Corp. used .cc proceeds to finance a $23,000-a-month satellite connection, with Cocos residents getting access for a $5 annual fee.[20](https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2000-11-14/article/2155?headline=Small-countries-sell-their-Internet-suffixes--The-Associated-Press) On dispute policy, .nu was the first ccTLD to adopt ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, with WIPO providing dispute-resolution services for .nu, .tv, .ws, and other small ccTLDs by 2000.[21](https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/prdocs/2000/wipo_upd_2000_106.html) Commentators have framed the gap between Niue's outcome and Tuvalu's, in which the code's owner never gained control of its revenue, as a case of "digital colonialism".[10](https://www.wired.com/story/the-digital-colonialism-behind-tv-and-ly/)
## Abuse, security, and infrastructure
The zone's security posture is comparatively strong. 57% of all .nu domains are protected with DNSSEC, against a 1% Oceania average, and the zone itself publishes a DS record with key tag 41209 under algorithm 13.[8](https://pulse-dev.internetsociety.org/en/reports/nu/) • [1](https://www.iana.org/whois?q=.nu) At the registry level, .nu supports [internationalized domain names](https://www.edgepedia.org/internationalized-domain-name), DNSSEC in DS mode (not required), registry lock, and second-level registrations of 1 to 63 characters, with no premium or reserved domains and no CZDS zone download access.[22](https://developers.opusdns.com/tld-knowledge-base/cctlds/nu) The registry runs ten nameservers (A, B, C, D, F, G, I, M, Y, and Z under NS.NU), each with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.[1](https://www.iana.org/whois?q=.nu) Hosting is offshore: the domain name servers underwriting the free internet services on Niue are based in Europe and the US, and were unaffected when [Cyclone Heta](https://www.edgepedia.org/cyclone-heta) damaged the island's internet café and structures in 2004.[14](https://wifination.nu/news/thorns-in-paradise/)
## Recent developments
The dispute gained renewed attention in February 2024, when The New York Times reported the two-decade fight over the suffix that began with the late-1990s offer to connect the island to the internet in exchange for control of .nu.[23](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/world/asia/niue-nu-domain-sweden.html) The Stockholm litigation's outcome is reported inconsistently: Niue's registry site describes a lawsuit as pending,[17](https://nic.gov.nu/) while ICANNWiki reports a March 2024 ruling in favor of Internetstiftelsen on the ground that a foundation cannot be liable for damages under the applicable rules.[11](https://staging.icannwiki.org/.nu) On the connectivity side, Niue's government approved a 12-month temporary license for Starlink as an internet provider on 19 March 2025, alongside Telecom Niue's island-wide fiber upgrades and two new network sites in Alofi and Tuapa.[24](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/pacific/590378/niue-greenlights-starlink-as-a-temporary-internet-provider) On the registry side, the Swedish Internet Foundation reissued the .nu terms and conditions as of 15 January 2026,[18](https://support.registry.se/file.php/3143255ZGHZBNPQWGTGTBA0PD/nu-terms-and-conditions-2026-01-15-eng.pdf?access_token=tgjsp5-cqexybtocb-5aabad429af1f8a00f0581492383e9def07025a3) and the IANA record, last changed 17 September 2026, confirms continued operation with whois.iis.nu and the internetstiftelsen.se registration page.[1](https://www.iana.org/whois?q=.nu)
## References
1. [IANA WHOIS: .nu](https://www.iana.org/whois?q=.nu)
2. [Brown Political Review: New Power in Name Alone](https://brownpoliticalreview.org/new-power-in-name-alone/)
3. [MIT Technology Review: How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/11/02/1082798/tiny-pacific-island-global-capital-cybercrime/)
4. [NIC.GOV.NU: Story](https://nic.gov.nu/story/)
5. [New York Times (reprinted by IUSN): On a Tiny Island, Catchy Web Name Sparks a Battle](https://wifination.nu/news/on-a-tiny-island-catchy-web-name-sparks-a-battle/)
6. [WIPO Addresses First Country Code Cyber Dispute (2000)](https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/prdocs/2000/wipo_pr_2000_211.html)
7. [AFNIC: .ai, .io and .tv and their surprising stories](https://www.afnic.fr/en/observatory-and-resources/expert-papers/ai-io-and-tv-and-their-surprising-stories/)
8. [Internet Society Pulse: Country Report for Niue](https://pulse-dev.internetsociety.org/en/reports/nu/)
9. [.nu Terms and Conditions of Registration (2021-11-01), Swedish Internet Foundation](https://internetstiftelsen.se/app/uploads/2021/10/nu-terms-and-conditions-2021-11-01.pdf)
10. [WIRED: The Digital Colonialism Behind .tv and .ly](https://www.wired.com/story/the-digital-colonialism-behind-tv-and-ly/)
11. [ICANNWiki: .nu](https://staging.icannwiki.org/.nu)
12. [ITU ccTLD workshop paper on IUSN corporate structure and .nu management](https://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-t/workshop/cctld/cctld057.pdf)
13. [ICANN Formalizes Relationships with ccTLD Manager for Niue (22 January 2008)](https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/icann-formalizes-relationships-with-cctld-manager-for-niue-22-1-2008-en)
14. [IUSN: Thorns in paradise](https://wifination.nu/news/thorns-in-paradise/)
15. [Government of Niue statement to WSIS Geneva on re-delegation of .nu](https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/geneva/coverage/statements/niue/nu.pdf)
16. [Digital Watch Observatory: Government of Niue files redelegation request for .nu](https://dig.watch/updates/government-niue-files-redelegation-request-nu)
17. [NIC.GOV.NU](https://nic.gov.nu/)
18. [.nu Terms and Conditions of Registration (2026-01-15), Swedish Internet Foundation](https://support.registry.se/file.php/3143255ZGHZBNPQWGTGTBA0PD/nu-terms-and-conditions-2026-01-15-eng.pdf?access_token=tgjsp5-cqexybtocb-5aabad429af1f8a00f0581492383e9def07025a3)
19. [Seattle Times: Tuvalu is a tiny island nation of 11,000 people. It's cashing in thanks to Twitch.](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/tuvalu-is-a-tiny-island-nation-of-11000-people-its-cashing-in-thanks-to-twitch/)
20. [Associated Press via Berkeley Daily Planet: Small countries sell their Internet suffixes (2000)](https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2000-11-14/article/2155?headline=Small-countries-sell-their-Internet-suffixes--The-Associated-Press)
21. [WIPO: DOT Country Codes Turn to WIPO for Help in Resolving Cybersquatting Disputes (2000)](https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/prdocs/2000/wipo_upd_2000_106.html)
22. [OpusDNS TLD knowledge base: .nu](https://developers.opusdns.com/tld-knowledge-base/cctlds/nu)
23. [The New York Times: The Two-Decade Fight for Two Letters on the Internet (21 February 2024)](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/world/asia/niue-nu-domain-sweden.html)
24. [RNZ: Niue greenlights Starlink as a temporary internet provider](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/pacific/590378/niue-greenlights-starlink-as-a-temporary-internet-provider)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Technology and the built world › Computing and digital systems › Networks and security › Security governance and internet policy › Internet governance › IP address and critical internet resource governance*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 15, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026 · Last review: Oct 15, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license