Identity Digital wins .us domain registry contract: Breaking

Two million domains to transition from GoDaddy Registry to Identity Digital.

[This story has been updated with a statement from Identity Digital and terms of the contract.]

Top level domain name firm Identity Digital has won the U.S. government contract to operate the country’s .us domain name.

Identity Digital will take over for GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY), which inherited the contract when it purchased Neustar’s registry business.

This is a blow to GoDaddy. With regarding two million domains and a wholesale price of $6.50 per year, it’s regarding $13 million in lost revenue. That’s not a lot for the firm, but it’s high-margin revenue. (First-year .us registrations are often offered at lower prices, so the total revenue number might be lower.)

GoDaddy lost the contract for .co last year, and that weighed on its revenue. .Co is a much more expensive top level domain, still.

Identity Digital operates hundreds of top level domains, counting some country code domains. It manages the backend for Anguilla’s popular .ai extension and also has the contract for .au (thanks to its Afilias buyout). It also runs .io, a popular extension for tech firms.

The original proposed terms of the government’s request for proposals would have excluded both Identity Digital and GoDaddy from bidding since they own domain registrars. The terms were later changed. A restriction that the registry be U.S.-based and have experience with a sizable registry limited the pool of contractors.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) originally hoped to name a winner by April, but delayed it multiple times.

In a release today, the NTIA stated:

NTIA will work with Identity Digital to elevate the usTLD to a gold standard, best-in-class country code Top Level Domain that demonstrates American innovation, leadership, and service on behalf of its registrants.

In a statement, Identity Digital CEO Akram Atallah stated:

We are pleased the U.S. government selected Identity Digital to help run .us. We committed to strengthening multistakeholder governance and bringing innovation to .us, and this selection affirms the strength of our registry services business. Registry operators around the world rely on our platform, and we now bring those services to .us. Our priority now is a smooth handoff. We will plan the move of .us to our systems in close coordination with NTIA, and our registrar and channel partners.

The government doesn’t pay Identity Digital directly but allows the firm to collect annual fees from registrars for each .us domain registered.

The contract runs for 36 months, counting a transition period of up to nine months. This is followed by option periods that could extend the contract to seven years.

An NTIA spokesperson told Reglike that further information (such as wholesale pricing) will be disclosed later.