Comment by kjs3
7 months ago
A hedge fund operates the .io domain, they don't AFAIK own it without restriction. As a ccTLD, what happens if Mauritius tells ICANN "nope, not theirs, ours now, it's an asset as part of the transfer of sovereignty". In fact, in the link you provide, it looks like people involved have already starting a repatriation effort.
Of course, in the end, it'll probably end up with no end-user impact because someone (the existing operator or a new one) will negotiate a deal ($$$) with Mauritius that will provide continuity of operations and (hopefully) be more beneficial to the people of Chagos.
Mauritius already has an ISO 3166 code "MU" and matching ccTLD ".mu". "IO" isn't going to be a standard code. Its far from a foregone conclusion that ".io" will exist 10 years from now.
Yes, you are of course right...10 years + (however many years the legal process of transferring sovereignty takes) + (some number of extra years because stuff happens) from now I would completely agree it probably won't be around. But from an internet perspective for a mostly fad driven TLD I personally would expect on the day .io finally disappears from the nameservers the reaction will be "oh...that was still around?" or worse case a tiny number of "I forgot we registered that".
Tl;dr: "someone will likely run .io until ICANN turns it off, which it probably will, but we don't know who that is right now".