> >> > 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.
This is not what I want; it what the chair of the meeting, the DTI
representative, said was an absolute requirement.
If pressed, he might waffle on this. But it would be sensible to
assume that he meant what he said and that this is the position of
the UK government, who currently hold the European Union presidency.
I believe that you would get much the same response from DG IV, the
European Commission's department dealing with competition.
> 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.
I understand all of this.
> 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 doesn't make any sense. The CORE shared registry was designed to
host many TLDs.
> 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.
Speaking for myself (and not quoting the guy from the DTI) I think
that you miss the point. If there is only one CORE, it will have one
set of policies. It is for all practical purposes certain that some
policies will be poor. If there is no alternative registry, there
will be little incentive to change its bad policies.
Similarly on price. I think that you are being idealistic in claiming
that prices will inevitably fall. If you look at the monopoly nTLD
registries across Europe, you will find many different pricing policies.
Some registries are run very well and have low prices to registrars;
some are run very badly, have bad policies, and have high prices.
Where CORE sits on the spectrum will be largely determined by chance.
In the longer run, I would certainly expect a slow upward drift in
internal costs. Bureaucracies are like that.
-- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd http://www.vbc.net tel +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015