a reality is another question; money talks and big bucks are being waved about in the registry battles." However, the ml.org service ceased operations at the end of 1998 due to "technical and organisational problems" which included major server failures. Its second-level domains remain registered to Aveek Datta, president of the former Monolith Innovations Group, but appear not to be in active use. Throughout the domain's history, a one-page placeholder site at the nic.so address claimed that "no .SO domains are available and we are not looking for any registrar partners." However, the DNS servers for the domain name were badly configured, so the nic.so address was only available intermittently. Relaunch On February 3, 2009, ICANN approved redelegation of the .so domain to the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. In ICANN's meeting minutes, it was revealed that Aveek Datta, the former registry operator, had disputed the redelegation request but he did not respond to ICANN's request to verify his connection with the former company. The new registry operator relaunched the .so domain on November 1, 2010. Requests to become a registrar can already be submitted using the recently launched website of .SO Registry. Transfer On July 8, 2015, the .so ccTLD registry was transferred to the Somali Network Information Center (SONIC). On March 9, 2018, Somalia's newly established telecom regulator, the National Communications Authority (NCA) took control of the domain name from SONIC and Cloudy Registry, who ran the operations and the management of the domain Registry. Somaliland banned use of this TLD as a result of the 2018 transfer. Name spaces The .so domain currently offers thirteen namespaces: the second-level-space .so is intended for general purpose usage, and the third-level-space .com.so, .me.so, .net.so and .org.so are set aside for commercial entities, individuals, networks, and not-for-profit organisations, respectively. There also exists .edu.so for higher education institutions; .gov.so for government entities; .sch.so for schools; and .gm.so, .hs.so, .jl.so, .pl.so, and .sw.so for Galmudug, Hirshabelle, Jubbaland, Puntland, and South West states respectively. Registrars SONIC maintains a list of officially accredited local and international registrars. See also Communications in Somalia References External links IANA .so whois information SO whois information center SO Registry website Country code top-level domains Communications in Somalia Computer-related introductions in 1997