To me the answer is self-evident.

The codes that ICANN uses for ccTLDs, especially ones that are non-intuitive to foreigners (such as .ch for Switzerland, .za for South Africa or .kh for Cambodia) are based on an ISO standard, ISO 3166-1, with one notable exception (use of ,uk when the ISO code for the United Kingdom is GB).

This same standard also defines three-lettter codes. Because of the definition of a publicly-understood standard, anything besides allocating these ISO codes to the appropriate ccTLDs would cause substantial public confusion.

- Evan

On 22 September 2015 at 09:09, Maureen Hilyard <maureen.hilyard@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear At-Large members

 

Country codes are traditionally a 2-letter string. The new gTLD process is enabling country and territory codes to be expanded to 3-letters (or even as whole names).

 

The “Cross Community Working Group for the Use of Country and Territory Names as Top Level Domains” is asking: 

 

1. Should these new 3-letter country/territory codes be reserved ONLY as ccTLDs OR should they be open to everyone as gTLDs?  (This question refers to 3-letter code IDN ccTLDs and IDN gTLDs as well)

 

2. What advantages or disadvantages does your answer offer either group (ccTLDs or gTLDs)?

 

Please return your answers to these two questions to me asap. J

 

For those who would like to contribute to other questions about this topic please refer directly to the workspace 

https://community.icann.org/display/alacpolicydev/At-Large+Use+of+Country+and+Territory+Names+as+Top-Level+Domains+Workspace  

 

All comments welcome J

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Evan Leibovitch

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