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An interesting question arising from today’s deal to hand the Chagos islands back to Mauritius is: what happens to the .io ccTLD with the dissolution of the British Indian Ocean Territory? Presumably it passes to Mauritius, but do they keep it or scrap it, or change how the registry works?
in reply to Alexandra Lanes

The only instance of an in-use ccTLD being withdrawn that I found in IANAs reports was .TP:

iana.org/reports/2015/tp-repor…

In that case, Portuguese Timor stopped existing in 2002, new registrations were stopped in 2005, and the domain was finally withdrawn in 2015.

in reply to Ben Harris

@Ben Harris Their current procedure seems to be documented at iana.org/help/cctld-retirement and is pretty clear cut that if BIOT dies so does .io “Any preferences to retain the domain, or otherwise delay transition to the maximum extent possible, will not be considered a factor in any analysis”