ICANN plans to cancel their top level domain agreements.
ICANN has sent termination notices to ten contracted new top level domain name applicants, informing them that it plans to cancel their top level domain agreements.
The ten applicants applied for .brand top level domain names but have been slow to proceed to delegation.
ICANN warned last month that it would begin termination proceedings with applicants for about 200 top level domain names unless their owners showed progress toward delegating the strings.
The laggards are .brand applicants who are probably rethinking their decisions to operate a registry.
The ten TLDs in jeopardy are .naspers, .payu, .supersport, .mzansimagic, .mnet, .kyknet, .africamagic, .multichoice, .dstv and .gotv.
Shahram says
That’s cause they will lose money on horrible tlds
Gianni Ponzi says
Those are brand names. Like BMW , Sky etc. More than likely not for resale to general public.
Tarkster says
They are actually assisting them by relieving them of the gtld obligation which would otherwise cost them to lose even more on gtld foolishness.
John T O'Farrell says
My guess this is dead on “The laggards are .brand applicants who are probably rethinking their decisions to operate a registry.”
Rubens Kuhl says
A good number of those TLDs are from South Africa, possibly using ZACR as back-end like .africa, so I wonder if the never-ending drama of .africa contributed to giving those brands a bad impression of the program governance, and to decrease the ROI, as .africa websites could be flourishing by now if the original start-up schedule was followed, instead of local dominant .co.za.
Jade Devon says
It was more a case of “lets be like the Jones” and after investing a ton of money they werent too sure what to do.
The .Africa saga has in no way affected the way in which DNServices are able to facilitate the provisioning of these brand names.
Falconn says
With each day that passes by, it has been getting more obvious that the gtlds are failing. They are not of interest to the general public as evidenced by the overall lack of resales, there is a noticeable lack of usage and very little interest amongst new users. A feeling of apathy towards them seems to have permeated the internet. Yeah, maybe if you look real hard you can find one in actual use here and there, but in all, not so much. Many are now on life support selling for under $1. I think these companies were lucky to have been cut as they have been saved from a worse fate which would be having to actually market and use them.
Andrew Allemann says
The reason these are all from Africa is because African applicants got to go through the queue first. So, naturally, they’re the first to hit the deadline.