.SO Leaves GMO for Local Provider Hikes Prices

The Somalian government has switched registry provider for its .so ccTLD from GMO Registry to soNIC (soregistry.so), apparently a local provider.

The IANA records for .so were updated yesterday to indicate that Mogadishu-based soNIC is now the technical contact.

According to the current GMO-managed registry web site, new registrations were halted June 9 and will reopen at some point after July 8, when soNIC takes over.

In the meantime, renewal prices have been cranked up.

The .so domain opened up worldwide in late 2010, having been delegated the previous year.

The new registry tried to ride the wave created by .co’s launch a few months earlier, with middling results.

soNIC will evidently “ramp up abusive use monitoring and enforcement of acceptable use policies”. I wonder if that involves anti-piracy measures (sorry).

At the time the ccTLD launched, I noted that Somalia was pretty much the worst place in the world to live.

But, just as the new registry plans to clean up its namespace, the nation itself has started to clean up its act somewhat in the meantime. It’s now only number two on the Failed State Index.

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