At the very beginning there was only one company in Belarus which carried out the registration of domains .by – Open Contact Ltd. In October 2006 two other Belarusian companies got the licence to provide technical protection of information, including its execution by cryptographic means, and comprising the usage of a digital signature. Those were Reliable Software Inc. and Business Network JV. The former one has started to receive inquiries and carry out domain registration since 27 March 2007. On 3 September 2007 the licence was granted also to Extmedia and on 29 June - to Active Technologies. At present each of the five companies carries out domain registration officially. Since 1994 the only Technical Administrator of the .by domain has been Open Contact Ltd.