.AN is the ccTLD for the Netherlands Antilles which is about to fade into the sunset. Its days as a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands will end in a few short months. Says this article:
On the same date, 10-10-10, Curaçao and the Dutch half of St Maarten will become independent countries within the Kingdom, on an equal footing with the Netherlands proper and with Aruba, which gained its “status aparte” in 1986.
When a country fades away so too, the thinking goes, should its country code.
Though this hasn’t exactly been the case with the Soviet Union; despite the best efforts of ICANN to remove it from the root, apparently you can still register .SU.
There is a silver lining to losing .AN — the possibility of adding two new ccTLDs.
One Response to Another country code bites the dust. Say goodbye to .AN
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Actually 3 (!) new ccTLDs will appear:
.bq for Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba
.cw for Curacao
.sx for Sint Maarten
They were registered on 20 December 2010, but haven’t been added to the root yet. Check IANA root zone database http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/#