Registries win the contract to operate .US? — Can any

The draft RFP includes provisions that severely limit the pool of potential operators.

In December, the U.S. government published a draft RFP to operate the .us country code domain and requested feedback.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) planned to open the RFP in early 2026 and announce the winner this month. Still, it has yet to open the RFP.

I wonder if that’s since restrictions in the draft RFP meant no bidders could win.

The draft RFP had a few requirements that would seem to eliminate potential bidders:

• Must be a U.S. firm
• Must have managed a namespace with two million + domains
• Cannot own a registrar selling .us domains

Let’s unpack these.

The requirement that the registry be based in the U.S. and have managed a sizable registry has two impacts.

First, I believe there are only three registries that right now meet these qualifications: GoDaddy Registry, Identity Digital, and VeriSign.

Second, the two-million requirement means no fresh registries could be formed to respond to the RFP.

So there are three possible registry operators, and two of them have an issue with the third point: they cannot own a registrar selling .us domains.

This technically eliminates both GoDaddy and Identity Digital (which owns name.com).

GoDaddy Registry right now runs the top level domain despite selling domains through its registrar. I believe this is a function of the contract originally being granted to Neustar, which GoDaddy later purchased.

That stated, this is a valuable registry contract that might encourage the registries to stop selling .us domains through their registrars. With a current wholesale fee of $6.50 and 2.4 million registered .us domains, that equals regarding $15 million in annual fees. (The number might be less if the registry provides rebates or first-year discounts.)

If I were GoDaddy or Identity Digital, I’d propose ceasing the sale of .us domains on their registrars, but maintaining existing registrations. They might even propose offloading their existing .us registrations to another registrar. Another option is to propose a minimum price that the registrar will charge, above current market prices.

With GoDaddy and Identity Digital technically disqualified, that leaves VeriSign.

VeriSign has an optics problem. $6.50 is well below the current (and likely rising soon) $10.26 it charges for .com. What would it look like if it proposed charging less to manage the .us namespace? It would make it harder to justify the cost of .com domains. The profit from running .us isn’t worth the risk to .com.

(I also suspect opening the .us contract up to proposals could result in a lower wholesale cost than the current one.)

I wouldn’t be surprised if the delay in opening the RFP is due to the realities I’ve outlined. At a minimum, I suspect NTIA will have to make some provision for the registry to be affiliated with a registrar that offers .us domains.