The authorities of the Finnish capital, Helsinki, have approached ICANN with a request to terminate the contract for managing the .HELSINKI domain. The domain was delegated during the first round of the New gTLD Program and added to the DNS root zone on December 10, 2015. It cannot be said that the city made no attempts to put its domain to use, but these initiatives failed to result in the development of the domain zone and were apparently ultimately deemed unsuccessful.
Domain Incite points out a curious detail. The city of Helsinki submitted its request to terminate the contract to ICANN back in May. However, the request specifically stipulated that the contract should not be terminated before August 12, the final application deadline for the second round of the New gTLD Program. It can be assumed that the Helsinki administration was seeking to prevent a third party from applying for the .HELSINKI domain once it became available. However, such a precaution appears to have been unnecessary: under ICANN rules, the delegation of geographic TLDs is fundamentally impossible without the approval of the relevant local authorities – in this case, the Helsinki administration.
As a result, Helsinki has become the third capital to abandon its city domain. The same fate had previously befallen the domain of the Hungarian capital, .BUDAPEST, and that of Qatar’s capital, .DOHA.
