So Which New TLD Applicants Claim To Be Irish?

The technology media today is swamped with coverage of the new TLD “reveal” in London.

Since I’m based in Ireland I thought I’d have a closer look at the “Irish” applicants.

There aren’t that many:

• Afilias Limited
• Afilias Domains No. 1 Limited
• IRB Strategic Developments Limited
• TLD REGISTRY LIMITED
• Accenture Global Services Limited

The two Afilias companies might appear to be the same, but their directors are quite different.

Accenture’s application is a clear .brand application which they’re doing via Melbourne IT with Verisign running the backend.

The other two companies, however, are quite interesting.

TLD Registry Ltd was formed on February 29th 2012. There isn’t a lot of information about them, though their directors are currently listed as:

• Arto Juhani Isokoski
• Nils Stefan Lindberg
• Niko Taneli Tikka
• Tuomo Olavi Rissanen
• Juhani Juselius

They’re all Finnish and they all appear to be domain industry veterans. ICANN watchers might recognise one or two of the names.

They’re applying for 3 strings:

• .city
• .中文网 – Chinese IDN for .website
• .在线 – Chinese IDN for .online

According to the company’s site they’re backed by the Vision+ fund.

IRB Strategic Developments Limited is a wing of the International Rugby Board and are applying for .rugby with Minds and Machines providing the backend.