.cable
Is .cable a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .cable, as of 7 October 2026. One applicant claimed it and is out. We keep the entry on the record either way.
- Journey To The West
A narrow industrial word: cable makers and broadband firms could use it, but few would make it their main web address.
wire-and-cable manufacturers, broadband/cable-TV operators, and electrical-supply distributors wanting a literal product-word address; occasionally AV/consumer-electronics accessory brands
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round. Their catalog line: “The wire that carries power and data alike.”
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a single generic noun naming a delivery medium and the legacy industry built on it, where no operator owns the word and success requires an entire incumbent sector to re-identify under a category label.
Same bet shape - an everyday telecom-infrastructure noun many carriers, resellers and hardware sellers could plausibly claim - though it skews consumer-device where the target skews operator and plant.
Covers the literal-hardware reading: a B2B component-category generic whose buyers are manufacturers and distributors putting a product-line identity, not a corporate identity, on the string.
What a .cable domain is
.cable is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Infrastructure. Nobody is chasing .cable today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .cable domain extension real yet?
.cable is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. Nobody has applied for it on the public record; the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round is the process that would decide whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .cable domain?
You can’t yet. A .cable name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .cable was .radio, delegated on 12 October 2016.
Is .cable a real TLD?
Not yet. .cable is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .cable and is no longer in it. We keep the entry, and every entry on this page links to its source.
- Journey To The West · now abandonedICANN
- Journey To The West · first recordedJourney To The West Corporation
“.cable · Manufacturing & Materials · “The wire that carries power and data alike.””Journey To The West Corporation
- I place .cable in the 10-29 band (vanity/narrow), at the upper end. By analogy — flagged as such — trade-vertical generics like .plumbing, .contractors, and .lighting drew thin registration bases and almost no primary-identity use among the businesses they name; industrial B2B buyers overwhelmingly stay on .com/ccTLDs, and cable-TV operators are a consolidating handful of brands with entrenched domains, so demand looks event-thin and promotional. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no analogous case of an industrial-materials TLD sustaining volume registrations or a meaningful aftermarket, and the brand signal ('cable') reads as a component, not an identity. It is not in the 1-9 band because 'cable' is a real dictionary word covering large genuine industries (wire/cable manufacturing, broadband infrastructure), so some sincere defensive and product-line use is plausible over 5 years. The applicant is a Beijing-based company that announced a published portfolio of 323 submitted strings in the ICANN 2026 round; a portfolio-scale operator makes broad discounted distribution more likely than deep vertical cultivation, which fits the volume-on-price profile. Main market uncertainty: whether China's large cable/wire manufacturing export sector would adopt an English generic TLD for B2B identity — meaningful uptake there is the one channel that could push this toward the 30-49 band.