Approximately 2.3 million domain name registrations were added to the internet in Q4 2016 according to a report by VeriSign Inc. This brings the total number of domain names registered to about 329.3 million as of December 31, 2016. The new additions in Q4 equate to a growth rate of 1.8 percent over the previous quarter.
The report by VeriSign also noted that .com and .net top-level domains (TLD) had a combined total of about 142.2 million domain name registrations by the end of Q4 2016. The .com domain name base equalled 126.9 million domain name registrations, while the .net name equalled 15.3 million domain name registrations.
In September last year, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MEIT) announced a number of initiatives to increase the adoption of internet in the country, especially amongst the non-english speaking population. In order to do this, it made domain names available in 15 languages. It was also noted that the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) had applied for remaining languages to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and had passed the string evaluation criteria.