dotBerlin hires Nic.at
Austrian registry Nic.at has signed its second city top-level domain partner in the form of dotBerlin, the company that has been planning a .berlin bid for several years.
The news follows its deal with dotHamburg, announced last week.
Nic.at, which now manages over 1 million .at domains, is the largest German-speaking registry that is also offering back-end registry services to new gTLD applicants.
This, I’m told, makes it particularly reassuring to German local government, which get proven scale and a local(ish) partner which speaks the same lingo.
There’s another .berlin applicant, UniteBerlin, which is backed by Minds + Machines and, following its recent partnership announcement, Neustar.
The support of Berlin’s local authority will decide the winner.
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Good news for NIC AT.
Any clue why Denic the German registry is not handling this themselfs ? Maybe against their own regulations perhaps ?
It wouldn’t be right for DEnic to be promoting a new gTLD that would effectively be in competition with itself in its main market. Also promoting .berlin could be exceeding DEnic’s remit as the ccTLD registry.