.country

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Status:	Delegated
Type:	Generic
Category:	Culture

.country is a proposed TLD in ICANN's New gTLD Program. The proposed application succeeded and was delegated to the Root Zone on 31 March 2014.

Current Applicants

1. Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd.- It is one of 68 applications that the company has filed on its own behalf. This applicant submitted a Public Interest Commitment, which can be downloaded here.

Partnership

In April 2013, the two applicants, Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd. and Uniregistry announced that they had struck a deal to enter into a joint partnership to run the .country TLD. It was one of the first major partnerships of this kind between portfolio applicants. Both companies will have a 50% equity stake in a new company. Under the conditional heads of terms for the proposed joint venture, either Uniregistry or TLDH will withdraw its application and, once the surviving applications is approved by ICANN, the authority to operate .country will be transferred to the new joint venture. The transfer will require ICANN approval, which the directors of the Company fully expect to be forthcoming. In the end, Uniregistry formally withdrew its application.

Previous Applicants

1. Uniregistry, Corp.- The company applied for 54 new TLDs.

Although the company formally withdrew its application, it has a previous partnership with TLDH to administer the .country TLD.

Contract Signed

On 19 December 2013 Top Level Domain Holdings received a Registry Agreement signed by ICANN for .country after passing all the required processes needed to become a Registry Operator for the string.

Delegation and Availability

.country was delegated to the Root Zone of the DNS on 31 March, 2014, completing the successful application for the string.