The American telecommunications company Comcast has notified ICANN it no longer wishes to operate the .COMCAST and .XFINITY brand domains delegated to it. The reasons for the refusal are not disclosed in the letter, but judging by the fact that no names were registered in any of the domain zones other than the mandatory nic domains, the company was unable to understand how and why brand domains could be used - or considered their use inappropriate.
According to statistics cited by Domain Incite when reporting this news, 494 branded domains were delegated in the first phase of the new generic top-level domain program. If ICANN satisfies Comcast's request and removes the .COMCAST and .XFINITY domains from the DNS root zone - the probability of which is almost 100% - their number will currently be reduced to 376. Thus, 118 branded domains are already unnecessary to their owners.
