In a move that has surprised practically nobody, Verisign has announced that the wholesale fees for .com domain names will be going up. From September 1st 2022 the wholesale cost for a .com domain name will increase to $8.97 (US dollars). The current wholesale price is $8.39. The price rise is 7%, which is the maximum that Verisign is allowed under their current contract … [Read more...] about Verisign to Increase Wholesale Fees for .com Domains
Generic top-level domain
ICANN Releases Open Source RDAP Compliance Tool
ICANN has released the code for an RDAP conformance tool. The tool was developed for ICANN by Viagénie, who had already released a mobile RDAP client. It's good to see that the code is being released as open source under an Apache license. Both registries and registrars in the gTLD world are contractually obliged to run RDAP servers. Eventually these will replace whois … [Read more...] about ICANN Releases Open Source RDAP Compliance Tool
The New Owners of .HipHop Go Public
If you're "into" ICANN policy stuff you'll probably be aware of the ongoing spat between ICANN and a company that had bought one of Frank Schilling's domain extensions. A very very brief recap. Schilling decided to divest himself of his interests in domain registries. So he decided to auction off most of the domain name extensions that he had under his UNR company. The … [Read more...] about The New Owners of .HipHop Go Public
PIR Adds Multiple Domain Extensions to Portfolio
PIR, the company that runs the .org domain extension, has announced that it is to expand its portfolio of domain extensions. Up until now PIR ran .org which is one of the oldest and best established top level domains. More recently they added both .ngo and .ong, which were meant to serve the NGO sector though take-up hasn't been exactly "amazing" with just over 4 thousand names … [Read more...] about PIR Adds Multiple Domain Extensions to Portfolio
.Club Registry DNS Goes Down
The DNS for the entire .club domain extension is currently offline, or at least appears to be. While some DNS servers might be still serving old data from their cache the actual DNS servers for the domain are not working correctly. The .club registry are apparently aware of the issue, but no details of what it is nor when it will be resolved. All gTLD registry operators … [Read more...] about .Club Registry DNS Goes Down
Radix Reports Premium Sales up for H1 2021
Radix registry, who run a bunch of new TLDs including .tech, .space, .online, .press and more have released their premium sales report for H1 2021. It's been a good year for the company so far, with their overall premium sales up 43% from H2 of 2020. Here are a few other salient data points: $2.91M in premium revenue$1.67M coming from renewals43% growth in premium new … [Read more...] about Radix Reports Premium Sales up for H1 2021
ICANN’s NomCom Announces Selections
ICANN's nominating committee is responsible for selecting people for a variety of positions across the various boards, councils and committees within ICANN. The number of appointments varies year on year, due to term lengths and other factors. This year's appointments were announced yesterday: ICANN Board of Directors Edmon Chung, Asia, Australia, Pacific … [Read more...] about ICANN’s NomCom Announces Selections
ICANN Expands Contractual Waiver for Security Issues to Registrars
ICANN has announced that they are expanding the scope of contractual waivers for security issues to include registrars. That's a bit of a mouthful, so I'll try to unpack it a bit. Under normal circumstances both registrars and registries are bound by ICANN policies and contractual obligations. In simple terms this means that they only register and manage domain names when … [Read more...] about ICANN Expands Contractual Waiver for Security Issues to Registrars
3 Years of .Global
The .global TLD has been live for 3 years and to celebrate the registry has prepared a nice graphic showing some interesting data about the domain extension's usage (see below). At time of writing there are just over 34 thousand .global domains registered. While that number may not be as high as some registries the .global registry is claiming quite high usage rates, as well … [Read more...] about 3 Years of .Global
Two Years of Dot Tech
The guys over at Radix Registry have put together a nice little graphic to celebrate the second anniversary of the .tech TLD. Over the past two years the domain extension has grown to over 300 thousand registered domain names. In terms of users they've managed to get several high profile companies onboard including Web Summit, CTA and many more. … [Read more...] about Two Years of Dot Tech