PuntoGal Association

The deadline for sending in applications is in three months time. Puntogal is putting the finishing touches to the reports that are essential to show ICANN that the Galician domain name is technically and financially feasible and that is has the support of a wide sector of the population.

Deadlines

Once all the applications have been sent in ICANN will be assessing candidates with a complex process that will take between 12 and 18 months. If the application is successful, .gal domains will be available for register as of mid-2013.

Among the 110 bodies participating in the Puntogal Association are Galicia's main cultural and educational institutions: the Real Academia Galega, the Consello da Cultura, and the Universities of Santiago de Compostela, Vigo and Coruña, among many others.

Why do we need .gal?

More than 20 expat and emigrants' associations from ten different countries (Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Argentina, the US, Uruguay and Brazil) also work with the Puntogal Association, because being a link for the expat and emigrant communities is one of the practical uses that .gal will have.

The .gal domain will also undoubtedly help people locate resources in Galician and related to Galicia much more quickly, and .gal would make it easier as well as mor prestigious to publish in Galician online – as has already happened with the only linguistic domain name currently in use .cat.

Helping to bring Galician into IT is profitable

In only 5 years the Puntcat Foundation has registered over 51000 domains and the domain for Catalonian language and culture is self-financing. Puntogal is, like Puntcat, a not-for-profit endeavor and the money raised will be used to fund schemes supporting the use of the Galician language in computing and internet.

Online support

Over 13000 people worldwide already support Puntogal - with more arriving every day - signing up to the initiative on the Puntogal website. The  .gal Association would like to encourage internet users to sign up, if they haven't already done so, to show ICANN the extent of support for this domain.