.Co Domain Launch

With the Local Sunrise phase of the .Co ccTLD launch closed and roughly
two weeks until the end of the Global Sunrise, Landrush (public
availability at a price of around USD $300 per year) is not far away. 

The Landrush phase is provided for businesses that do not hold a
registered trademark for a particular name, but wish to protect their
brand.  This phase gives them the opportunity to register the .co
variation of their existing domain, though owning the existing domain
is not a requirement.  Since this phase is technically open to anyone,
many of the bigger domainers will be buying up valuable generic
domains.  The high price is designed to discourage domainers from
snapping up too many domains, during this phase.  If two or more people
attempt to register the same domain during this phase, it will go into
an auction. 

General Availability is the final phase of the launch, where.co domains
are available to anyone, at a much more reasonable price of around USD
$30 per year.  This will be a busy time for domainers, who will probably
be emptying their bank accounts, to buy up as many domains as they can. 

Just in case, you haven’t heard about the .co launch, here’s a bit
of history…
.Co is the ccTLD for Colombia.  Control of this ccTLD was originally
delegated to the University of The Andes in Bogot