GoDaddy could lose control of .co this week
It looks like GoDaddy’s recently acquired .co registry could lose formal control of the ccTLD this week.
ICANN’s board of directors has “Transfer of the .CO (Colombia) top-level domain to the Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies” on its agenda for its meeting this Thursday.
Since 2009, IANA record for .co shows the Colombian company .CO Internet as the sponsor, admin contact and tech contact.
.CO Internet was acquired by Neustar for $109 million in 2014. Neustar’s registry business, including the .co contract, was acquired by GoDaddy earlier this year. Most of .CO Internet’s original staff are still with the company.
GoDaddy now has the contract to run .co for the next five years, but as a service provider rather than having full administrative control of the TLD.
A redelegation to the Colombian ministry will not affect that contract, and in fact seems to have been envisaged by it.
Back in April when the renewal was announced, MinTIC said it would in future “be in charge of its [.co’s] administration through a group dedicated to Internet governance with technical personnel with knowledge and ability to manage and administer the domain”.
The new deal also sees Colombia receive 81% of the profits from .co, compared to the 6-7% it received under the old deal.
Assuming the ICANN board gives the redelegation the nod this week, it usually only takes IANA a day or two to make the appropriate updates to its registry.
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