Re: PAB The Green Paper and competing registries

From: Patrik Fältström (paf@swip.net)
Date: Fri Feb 27 1998 - 04:34:45 PST


At 23:30 1998-02-26 +0000, Jim Dixon wrote:
>On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>
>> > We had a meeting with the Department of Trade and Industry in London
>> > last week. The one point that the chair of the meeting was emphatic
>> > about was that no-competition was a non-starter.
>>
>> How is CORE no competition? Seems like a competitive system to me.
>
>Just one gTLD registry = one vendor in a market = no competition.

Well, it all depends on what you think you will compete with, and how, you
can see what you will fulfil with competition between registries. It is too
easy to just say that you want competition between registries.

You might want with competition between registries have some kind of tool
which ensures that the registry is run as efficient as possible, and
included in that is a reliable, cheap and fast service for the registrars.
In the CORE system, that is ensured by having the registrars running the
registry. It is our strong belief that the registrars will not allow the
registry to be inefficient, slow and cost too much money -- because it is
the registrars together that "own" the registry, and the less they have to
pay to the registry, the more they can keep for themselves.

The second point I want to rise is that a TLD by itself, because of the
domain name system itself, is a monopoly. It doesn't matter how you
implement it, it is and will be a monopoly.

Because of that, it can only be one registry per TLD.

That in turn means that competition between registries will be between
TLDs, and I don't belive in that for a single second. The customer, which
contacts a registrar for registering a domain, will select the TLD
depending on the lexical string it represents, and select the registrar
depending on the cost, service and other issues. The customer will not be
able to select registry, and depending on that choice, select TLD.

Also note that CORE, as a membership organization of registrars, buy the
operations itself from a separate company, and can choose to change if the
price/performance is too bad.

        Patrik

Email: paf@swip.net URL: http://www.tele2.se
PGP: 4D38 91A4 27D9 C8B2 6975 D6BB 21D0 4C57 BD23 6602



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