ICANN to terminate five new gTLDs
ICANN is set to terminate the registry contracts for five new gTLDs run by an apparent deadbeat registry.
Asia Green IT System’s agreements for .pars, .shia, .tci, .nowruz and .همراه (.xn--mgbt3dhd) have all been “Escalated to Termination Process” following a July breach notice, according to ICANN’s web site.
The first stage of the termination is mediation, which can be followed by arbitration before the contracts, which were all due to expire next month anyway, finally get torn up.
The escalation was not unexpected. All five gTLDs were migrated to the Emergency Back-End Registry Operator program last month after critical systems failed to function within the contractual requirements.
It is believed that the TLDs stopped functioning properly after AGIT failed to pay its back-end provider. It also allegedly failed to pay its ICANN fees.
The gTLDs in question for the most part were not used. The Iranian new-year-themed .nowruz had a handful of third-party registrations but the others never launched in the decade AGIT was contracted to run them.
.tci is an interesting case, a planned dot-brand that AGIT had intended to operate on behalf of the Telecommunication Company of Iran, the country’s incumbent telco.
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