No they aren't though it is good practice to use lower case at all times.

Protect your web presence
Have you considered registering your .com, .com.au, .net.au, .co.nz variants of your domain? The deciding factor usually depends on how serious you are about Protecting Your Online Value. Ask yourself whether it would disturb you if a competitor registered these domains? Our easy to use and reliable Web and Email Forwarding services allow you to point as many domains as you want to your website.

Web with benefits:
Another benefit of registering multiple domains is the greater probability of being located on Search Engine listings. An interesting fact is that many Search Engines now feature region specific searches. You can perform a generic search, or you can select the 'Search Australia Only' option.

How the search works is simple; an 'Australian Only' search may prioritise addresses that end in '.au'; a 'New Zealand Only' search may prioritise addresses that end in '.nz'. To guarantee your website is listed and accessed by both regions you will need to have both domain names registered.

In contrast to the above, neither the '.au' nor the '.nz' domains will stand a chance of competing against the '.com', or rather the TLD name space, if someone submits a generic search with no regions specified.

If you currently conduct business in other countries, or one day plan to expand then we recommend securing your country specific domains now.