CentralNic signs first legacy gTLD
CentralNic has become the new back-end registry provider for .coop, a gTLD that was approved by ICANN almost 15 years ago.
The decision by DotCooperation comes after original back-end Midcounties Co-operative Domains decided to get out of the business, according to the registry.
In a statement, DotCooperation said:
We would like to advise our registrars that we have started the preparations for migrating .coop to the new registry operator system and we aim to be fully transitioned by early April in order to make sure that Registrars have 30 days notice in respect of these changes
The transition won’t affect many registrars — only about a dozen currently have .coop domains under management.
The registry said most of them already have relationships with CentralNic.
It’s CentralNic’s first back-end deal for a legacy, pre-2012 gTLD.
The company is also taking over DNS for the TLD, replacing Dyn.
The .coop space, which is restricted to co-operatives, only has about 8,000 domains. If it were a new gTLD, it would rank around 100 by volume.
CentralNic really rocks. Excellent new gTLD offer.