.mp, the ccTLD of Northern Mariana Islands, will soon
be available to anyone. The open registration for is scheduled to
begin November 15, 2004. Sunrise registration opened July 26 and is
scheduled to run through November 14, 2004.
Previously unavailable, this extension is the only existing TLD
dedicated solely as the address for mobile Internet sites. So if you
are a Member of Parliament, are you eligible?
[Press release and Thomas Roessler's notes; more on the registry's
website, which registered the trademark dotMP].
3 comments:
It's really incredible how countries market their tld to mean just about anything but their own country name.
The .ps tld is already been marketed as 'personal site' and registrations arent yet open to the public (not even in sunrise mode)!
As for the .mp, fot.mp is taking a strange approach: domain are sold with websites: "Domain names are not sold separately. Each dotMP™ Commercial Site comes with its own .mp domain name. Fees for new modules shall be a separate charge."
Registrations are on 5 year basis, no more no less, at $180 min. a year (so minimun $900 for 5 years).
Anyway, just for the records, you don't need to pay such a premium price for a website targeted at mobile devices: .ms could easily mean mobile site (cost ~$35/y), .mn for mobile number (~ $25/y).
As for the use of the .mp domain, the website of the Northern Mariana nic has two plan: DotMP CS (Commercial site) and dotMP PS.
CS is the new tld for Yugoslavia (don't know if it will allow registrations from foreigners directly undet .cs) and PS is, as I mentioned before, Palestine, which is very willing to market its tld worldwide!
From their home page, apparently, there are a lot of trademarks alredy registered. We will see soon if the registrations are just for brand protection or those companies will actually develop mobile enhanced website!
Some information posted by the previous commenter is incorrect. First of all you do not have to register for 5 years, in fact all registrations are for a single year. Second of all the price of 179.95 is only for trademark holders and only during Sunrise.
Thank you for your comments.
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