Companies have about a month left to apply to provide backend registry services for new top level domains.
New top level domain name applications are due on August 12, and that date is also the deadline to apply to be a Registration Service Provider (RSP), ICANN has announced.
RSPs are backend registry providers. After requiring each applicant to provide significant technical details in the 2012 round, ICANN decided to pre-certify RSPs this time. When an applicant submits their top level domain application, they can just say they will use an approved RSP for their registry.
Some RSPs will only serve the same company. For example, Google is a certified RSP that will only serve as the backend registry for its own domains.
Other RSPs are designed to serve applicants who don’t want to run their own backend.
ICANN had to RSP application periods; the first application window closed in May 2025.
Some notable names were missing in that initial round of RSP certification, including Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN). On an investor conference call this year, Verisign suggested it would go through the RSP process in case it decided to apply for any top level domains (it no longer provides RSP services for TLDs it doesn’t own). This could also come in handy if Verisign later decides to acquire a new TLD from this round.
A list of currently-approved RSPs is available on ICANN’s website.
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