Star Gazing: Singapore-based StarHub Announces Plans for .STARHUB gTLD
February 2, 2012
By jbourne
According to a recent post on DomainIncite, StarHub, a telecommunications firm based in Singapore, has indicated that it will be applying for a .STARHUB gTLD. The company is scheduled to make a formal announcement today.
As we noted in our “State of Play” post, brands have kept their plans to apply quite close to the vest. StarHub is actually the first brand to publicly announce its intention to apply since the application period opened on January 12. Others, namely Canon, Hitachi, and Deloitte, have also gone public with their new gTLD plans, but all three did so before the application period kicked off.
Coming clean about whether or not they will submit applications for new gTLDs can be a tricky decision for brands. On the one hand, if they are certain in their plans, some brands may feel it is valuable to begin drumming up buzz and generating publicity for their .BRAND gTLDs in an effort to educate consumers. On the other hand, many brands may believe that announcing their plans to apply will spur their competitors to also apply for their .BRAND gTLDs, thus eliminating any potential competitive advantage.
In our experience, most brands fall into the second category. We don’t expect to see too many more announcements like StarHub’s between now and the closing of the application period. But if we do, you can be sure we’ll let readers know about it.
