TLD Registry

TLD Bilingual RGB CENTER.png
Type: Privately held
Industry: Internet
Founded: 2008
Founder(s): Taneli Tikka, Arto Isokoski, Jarno Majamäki
Headquarters: 1st floor FItzwilton House, Wilton Place
Dublin 2, DX23 Dublin
Country: Ireland
Email: Contact us
Website: internetRegistry.info
Blog: TLD Registry Blog
Facebook: TLD Registry Facebook
LinkedIn: TLD Registry LinkedIn
Twitter: TwitterIcon.png@TLDRegistry
Weibo: TLD Registry Weibo
Instagram: TLD Registry Instagram
Flickr: TLD Registry Flickr
Key People
Arto Isokoski, CEO
Kirsi Eräkangas, Chairman of The Board
Pinky Brand, VP Strategy and Partner Relations
Jin Wang or 王瑨, General Manager - China

Overview

TLD Registry Limited is a pan-European company, serving the global marketplace as a domain name registry in the high tech business and internet sectors. TLD Registry serves as the registry for two Top Level Domain IDNs, “Dot Chinese Online” (.在线 - meaning “online”), and “Dot Chinese Website” (.中文网 - meaning “website in Chinese”), which were approved and implemented under ICANN’s New gTLD Program.[1][2].

TLD Registry is headquartered in Ireland, but has offices globally in Beijing, Helsinki, Oslo, and Austin. Although its two IDNs are Chinese, TLD Registry takes a global approach to its business and marketplace capabilities. [3]

History

TLD Registry was founded in 2008 by 3 investment and high tech industry professionals from Finland: co-founder and CEO Arto Isokoski, co-founder and Chairman of the Board Taneli Tikka, and co-founder and Director Jarno Majamäki. The company was founded with the mission to create essential new Chinese TLDs that are culturally relevant and linguistically correct.

On June 27, 2008, Finland’s Tietoviikko published a news story [4] announcing ICANN’s new Internationalized Domain Names program. Finnish angel investors from the Vision+ Fund, a venture capital investment group in the high tech industry, saw this news clipping and pursued the opportunity to invest in the company with the TLD Registry founders.[1]

On April 12, 2012, TLD Registry officially sent its application to ICANN for the Dot Chinese Online (prioritization number 82)[5] and Dot Chinese Website (prioritization number 35 granted[6] strings, and was also one of three companies that applied for the .city (prioritization number 551 granted) string [7]. TLD Registry withdrew their bid for .city after an April 2014 private auction in which Donuts won.[2][8]

Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website were both uncontested and approved by ICANN in early 2013. On April 7, 2013, TLD Registry publicly launched Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website at the ICANN 46 meeting in Beijing. On June 14, 2013, TLD Registry made public announcements of progress toward the Go-Live of Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website at the ICANN 47 meeting in Durban.

On November 28, 2013, TLD Registry passed ICANN’s final pre-delegation testing for technical integrity, and on December 3, 2013, announced its Go-Live schedule for Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website.[9]

The Sunrise Period began on January 17, 2014, and ran for approximately 60 days, concluding on March 17, 2014. After a two-day quiet period, the Landrush Period began on March 20, 2014, with celebrations taking place at the Galaxy Macau Hotel, in Macau, China. Shortly before the landrush period officially began, TLD Registry held a traditional Southern-China Feng Shui Ceremony on Macau's Hac Sa beach to “break ground” on Dot Chinese Online & Dot Chinese Website. The ceremony featured traditional Chinese elements and a blessing by feng shui Master Lin.

The live auction event was held at the Galaxy Macau on March 21, 2014, where TLD Registry was the record-holder in names sold, selling 33 domain name lots for approximately $182,000USD[10]. The landrush period went through ICANN 48 in Singapore, and officially concluded on April 24, 2014, followed by a three day quiet period. SDC of SCOPSR also acquired over 21,000 domain names under Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website, and announced that all government websites transition to Chinese IDNs in the future. General availability began on April 28, 2014.

Within the first six months of general availability, both Dot Chinese Online and Dot Chinese Website are #2 and #4 for most sold IDNs, selling over 50,000 domain names combined[11]. TLD Registry has a total of 51 registrar partners[12].

References