The company Identity Digital has begun providing its backend infrastructure to the Mauritian ccTLD .MU. According to Domain Incite, IANA records show that .MU is now using Identity Digital’s name servers and Whois service. The news was also confirmed by several registrars. According to their representatives, the migration to Identity Digital’s platform happened last week.
In a curious way, this change gives some confidence in the future of another ccTLD, .IO, which is the national domain of the British Indian Ocean Territory. This term encompasses the islands of the Chagos Archipelago, formerly owned by Mauritius and occupied by the UK to establish a joint US-British military base in the mid-1960s. Last year, British and Mauritian authorities reached an agreement to return most of the archipelago to Mauritian sovereignty.
The treaty has not yet been ratified by the British Parliament and has yet to be published. However, according to most political observers, expectations are high that it is going to be enacted. In which case, the British Indian Ocean Territory may officially cease to exist, and its national domain .IO may face removal from the DNS system. On the other hand, .IO is managed by the same company, Identity Digital. According to unofficial data, .IO may have more than a million registrations and makes the company about $40 million a year. It would be highly undesirable to lose such a lucrative asset, of course. Now that Identity Digital is also involved in managing the national domain .MU, it will probably be able to find common ground with the Mauritian government and put in a good word for .IO.
