.ma is the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

country code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes ( geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ...

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

(

ccTLD A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all t ...

) for

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...

(french: Maroc). A local registrar with a local Moroccan company as administrative contact is needed to register a .ma or .co.ma domain name. Further restrictions are imposed on the registering of other second-level domains (such as .net.ma or .gov.ma).

History

In 1993, the

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Intern ...

(IANA) approved a request for delegation of the .ma ccTLD for administrative and technical contact to École Mohammadia d'ingénieurs. In 1995 the technical management of the .ma domain was taken over by

Maroc Telecom Maroc Telecom (Acronym: IAM, ar, اتصالات المغرب) is the main telecommunications company in Morocco. Currently employing around 11,178 employees, it is the largest telecommunications network in the country with 8 regional delegations ...

, who is still the (not formal) technical maintainer. On 12 May 2006 IANA redesignated the administrative and technical contact for the domain, and made the ''Agence nationale de réglementation des télécommunications'' (ANRT) the only official registrar for the .ma ccTLD. Within some years the ANRT will request the market to bid on a "Technical maintainer" license which is valid for five years. The new party will get 12 months to implement a provisioning system based on

Extensible Provisioning Protocol The Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) is a flexible protocol designed for allocating objects within registries over the Internet. The motivation for the creation of EPP was to create a robust and flexible protocol that could provide communicat ...

. Automatic provisioning of .ma domains cannot be expected until 2013. March 2015 the ANRT takes official control of .ma and launches new automatic provisioning.

Practical information

* Total hosts of .ma: 112,432 (2022-12-17) *Total internet users in Morocco: 19,021,000 (2016) *Total ADSL connection in Morocco: 550,000 (2007)

Second-level domains

Registration can be done directly at the second level, or at the third level beneath these names: * المغرب.: Arabic

Right-to-left In a script (commonly shortened to right to left or abbreviated RTL, RL-TB or R2L), writing starts from the right of the page and continues to the left, proceeding from top to bottom for new lines. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Kashmi ...

TLD for Morocco, General use * .ma: General use * net.ma: Internet providers * ac.ma: Educational institutions * org.ma: Organizations * gov.ma: Governmental entities * press.ma: Press and publications * co.ma: Commercial entities

Second top-level domain

A second top-level domain will be used for Morocco intended for domain names in the local language using Arabic characters. The string المغرب. has been registered and approved for this purpose, and was delegated to Morocco in April 2011, but it is not yet active (2015) and second level domains have not been granted yet.

References

External links

IANA .ma whois information

ANRT Registry website

List of .MA Domain registrars

.MA Domain whois
Country code top-level domains Communications in Morocco Mass media in Morocco Internet in Morocco {{Compu-domain-stub he:סיומת אינטרנט#טבלת סיומות המדינות sv:Toppdomän#M