The domain registration in Austria started in 1988 when the Top Level Domain .at was delegated to the University of Vienna. During the next 10 years, the University also served as .at registry. The initially severe delegation rules were liberealised in 1997 - this fact explains the abrupt rise of delegation numbers. One year later, nic.at took over the registration and administration of .at-domains.
nic.at has developed from its tasks. The demand for .at-domains has been great from the beginning - at the end of 2000 there were already 160,000 domain names registered. At the same time, the requirements for the domain management were increasing. New fields of activity - like customer care, registrar service, billing and accounting - were gradually taken over and developed by separate departments within nic.at. The technical operation of the .at-zone has remained with the Vienna University Computer Center (ZID). The increasing number of legal inquiries and domain name disputes between the domain holders (e.g. trademark rights) made it necessary to establish an internal legal competence - also with regard to legal disputes that were affecting the registry nic.at itself. The nic.at legal department has been quite successful regarding consultation and the settlement of legal disputes out of court.
In summer 2000, Richard Wein was appointed as the CEO responsible for finance, administration, organisation and IT. In September 2003, Robert Schischka joined nic.at as a second CEO, who is primarily responsible for the technical operation.
