Nominet has been picked as the Emergency Back-End Registry Operator for failed gTLD .desi, the company confirmed today.
The gig means the .uk registry will be responsible for keeping .desi ticking over — handling DNS, EPP, Whois etc — while ICANN looks for a successor registry.
.desi was operated by mom-n-pop outfit Desi Networks of Maryland on a Team Internet back-end until it threw in the towel this July, having failed to sell more than a handful of domains.
The term “desi” refers to the cultures of the Indian subcontinent and its diaspora, giving an addressable market well over a billion people. But there were only 1,743 registered domains at the last count but the only active sites that show up in Google are porn.
It’s the second gTLD to go into special measures after .wed, which Nominet is also handling. ICANN has three accredited EBERO providers, the others being CNNIC of China and CIRA in Canada.
While .wed has only one active registrar and barely 30 registered domains, .desi has almost 300 registrars, about 70 of which have domains.
The post Nominet takes over failed .desi first appeared on Domain Incite.
