The number of gTLDs to be delegated reached 83 on 8 January with .berlin being entered into the root, and becoming only the second city gTLD after .wien (Vienna).
Going to nic.berlin currently redirects to dotberlin.de and the delegation marks seven and a half years of hard work for the DotBerlin crew led by Dirk Krischenowski, Katrin Ohlmer and Johannes Lenz-Hawliczek since the project was founded on 21 June 2005.
But for .berlin and other gTLDs that are banking on public registrations, the going may be hard. It has been an issue for some time that many registrars, especially smaller ones are sceptical about devoting resources to gTLDs with little public interest, although they could act as resellers and be able to devote far fewer resources.
And Domain Incite has pointed out ICANN have released a list [pdf] of only 21 registrars that as of 6 January have a fully executed 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement and have been âcertifiedâ by IBM on the Trademark Database (TMDB) platform.
The list includes the worldâs largest registrar, and one of the largest applicants for gTLDs, GoDaddy. However as Domain Incite notes, these registrars certainly account for a large proportion of the market, accounting for 39.5 percent of the existing gTLD market.