Catalonia is on the verge of a heated schism with Spain; the land where Barcelona controls a great size of the Spanish economy, ran a referendum for independence, on October 1st.
The results were overwhelmingly in support of independence from Spain, despite efforts of the Spanish authorities to take down .CAT domains promoting the event. The dot .CAT Foundation took part in a general strike, protesting the arrest of one of its officers.
There have been talks of an eventual independence of Catalonia, but the Spanish government and its king are opposing any imminent plans. There are many valid reasons for Catalans to regain their independence as reinforced by the referendum results, as they have only been part of the Spanish kingdom since the 1700s.
With that Catalan independence, arrives a separate ccTLD or ISO 3166 entity on the Internet, and that – we’ve learned – will be dot .CT.
There should not be an issue with the existing .CAT, as country codes are always two letters long. Regardless of any geographic restrictions in its allocation, dot .CT will create some interesting “domain hacks” for words that end in “ct.”
Although we’re a far way from an independent Catalonia, the new ccTLD will be the newest allocated country code; most of them were approved in the 1980s and 1990s. North Korea received .KP in 2007.
There was .ss for South Sudan in 2011, but it does not appear to have been claimed yet.
Kevin – Right. And a controversial string at that!