Domain Incite reported that information about the .AERO domain had been updated in official ICANN documents. Jolly Host, a company within Identity Digital, is now listed as the registry operator. This clearly indicates that the company has acquired the right to manage the domain zone.
The .AERO domain is a so-called sponsored domain and was the first delegated domain of its kind dedicated to a specific industry. It was delegated to SITA (Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques), an organization that brings together telecommunications and IT service providers in the aviation industry. The domain was included in the DNS root zone long before the first phase of ICANN’s New Domains Program – back in December 2001.
However, .AERO remains a sponsored domain zone – at least for now. Only organizations that have confirmed their affiliation with the aviation industry through SITA are entitled to register names within it. That said, the situation may change in the future: there are numerous examples of sponsored domains changing status and becoming open, such as .XXX and .MED.
Under the current ICANN agreement governing .AERO, the registry pays an annual fee of $5,000, significantly below the standard $25,000. This fee structure is to change if registrations surpass 50,000 domain names, though that threshold remains distant: the domain currently has an estimated 13,000 registrations. Today, renewal fees average approximately €40 annually.
The acquisition of .AERO marks another step in Identity Digital’s ongoing expansion in the new domain market: this is already the sixth domain for which it has acquired management rights in less than five months this year. The company had previously acquired the .SAFETY, .DOT, .JOT, .CIRCLE, and .ONL domains.
