Verisign May Provide Registry Services for up to 220 New gTLDs

Yesterday Versign revealed in a press release that it may provide registry services for up to 220 new gTLDs. Verisign will of course provide registry backend services only if the applied for gTLD is awarded to their particular applicant. Many popular new gTLDs may still go to auction.

Through ICANN's new gTLD application process, which we expect to close in May 2012, Verisign applied for 14 new gTLDs including 12 transliterations of .com and .net. In addition, applicants for approximately 220 new gTLDs selected Verisign to provide back-end registry services.

Verisign is best know for administering the .com, .net and .tv extensions. Currently more than 116 million .com and .net domain names are registered with Verisign, more than 50% of all domain names registered worldwide, including ccTLDs. It is therefore not surprising that Verisign applied for 12 transliterations of the .com and .net extension. Transliterations of TLDs are strings converted from one script into another. This allows the use of ".com" in different scripts, such as Arabic.

It will be interesting to see which other two gTLDs Verisign considers worthy to expand their TLD portfolio. Even though ICANN has not yet given any news on the Reveal Day it may be within sight. Verisign believes that the New gTLD application window will close in May.