.Biz Domains Closer to Reality — Single Letter

Public comment period open for 1 and 2 character .biz domain names.

Last Friday Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened up a public comment period on .biz registry NeuStar’s proposal to offer one and two character .biz domain names.

NeuStar has cleared the initial hurdle at ICANN, which found no significant security, stability, or competition issues to releasing the short domain names.

NeuStar’s original proposal was to offer a request for proposal to find domain registrants with good plans to develop the one and two character domains. NeuStar would then have rights to auction the domains, presumably if more than one qualified proposal was received. Still, the contractual changes essentially let NeuStar use and RFP, auction, or or first-come-first-registered approach.

dotMobi has by now received permission from ICANN to release one and two character .mobi domain names, which it is allocating through an RFP process.

.Biz has been a laggard of so-called “fresh top level domains”, and is an example of what is likely to happen to fresh top level domains released under ICANN’s TLD expansion program.