My guess is that noting will happen for now. It’s mostly a decision that ICANN working groups have to figure out. But given the current size of the .io zone and that we already have a non existing cctld (.su for Soviet Unite), I’m pretty confident it will exist in the mid-term future.
.su is administered by the Russian national registry, because Russia is de facto the Soviet Union’s successor state. In this case, though, would .io stay with the UK or come under Mauritian control? It’s not clear.
Like the other remnants of the British Empire, the British Indian Ocean Territory was never a part of the UK. It was just land that we (the UK) expropriated from Mauritius at independence. A just solution would be for Mauritius, as the (now) actual successor state, to control dot-io.
IMO what will probably happen is that ICANN "promotes" the zone to being yet another top-level non-country code domain like .biz or .horse etc. Which is effectively what it is now.
Edit to add:
I don't think the .su precedent is applicable here. The Soviet Union was an internationally recognised state with a population, military, Montevideo Convention duties, seat at the UN, etc. The BIOT was and is nothing like that.
Sure, there's a lot of evidence that they were "terra nullius" before being claimed for the British empire. But the Chagos archipelago was inhabited utill its population was compulsorily expelled in the mid twentieth century.
I was surprised to discover that Ascension even has a ccTLD. I guess I assumed that the population was wholly military.
> I was surprised to discover that Ascension even has a ccTLD
That's because it was created by the same guy who created .io and .sh - British DNS "pioneer" Paul Kane, who clearly had a passion for finding remaining corners of the British Empire that could "claim" a bit of internet land (for his own profit).
Turning dot-io into a gTLD is certainly seems like the best course of action, but I think it's far from likely that ICANN will do that considering that there are no other two-letter gTLDs.
There are not that many two letter codes (a comment said 26*26= 676) and they are reserved for country codes. Global tlds are three letters and up (eg com org etc)
Well, this one is special, by virtue of being in widespread commercial use.
ICANN will act in whatever manner causes them the least trouble, which will be to retain the status quo. They have absolutely no incentive to behave otherwise.
> In this case, though, would .io stay with the UK or come under Mauritian control? It’s not clear.
Before the retirement of .yu, Slovenia wanted to hold on to it, but it was not the successor state of Yugoslavia so they had to relinquish control and pass it to Serbia. So going by that logic, it would not stay in the UK (for long).
Mauritius could decide to incorporate it as "Mauritius Indian Ocean Territory", hence maintaining the CC. I expect .io owners will likely suggest something like that, while showing them how much money they could get from a 10-15% deal similar to what Tuvalu has for .tv. Nobody likes to burn money.
ccTLDs other than .su have been retired when the country they represented ceased to exist or got renamed. .zr, .tp, .cs (twice?) according to [0]
I agree with you though, there doesn't seem to be a strong rule for this kind of thing and all interested parties would likely prefer for .io to continue to exist, so it will continue to exist, probably under Mauritius's ownership.
My guess is that noting will happen for now. It’s mostly a decision that ICANN working groups have to figure out. But given the current size of the .io zone and that we already have a non existing cctld (.su for Soviet Unite), I’m pretty confident it will exist in the mid-term future.