Re: [wg-c] Factual evidence of price competition

[werner@axone.ch (Werner Staub)]

Milton,

Why don't you just call it a price effect? How the .md registry 
and .nu registries compete against one another escapes me. Heck, 
if the price mattered a lot, then .com would have felt the 
competition from .nu. 

If price matters, and possibly you will argue that the restrictive
or open policies of a registry also matter, how do you explain that
.com has so many more registrations than .net and .org? The price
and the policies are the same.

And as a last point, will you say that, as an absolute and 
axiomatic rule, domain holders find it in their interest that the
the registration price should be as close to zero as possible?

That being said, I don't think anybody really denies the fact
that pricing has an effect. That is about as much as you can say:
an effect.

Regards,


Werner




Milton Mueller wrote:
> 
> >From the .NU site
> 
> 1. What does it cost to register a .NU Domain name and when is
> payment for registering a name due?
> The registration fee is US$45 including set up fee and two years' annual
> maintenance. The annual renewal/maintenance fee for subsequent years is
> US$25.
> 
> [MM Note -- this price used to be $70 for 2 years, $35/year renewal, prior to
> regulation of dot com. In other words, they are price followers of NSI. Also .NU
> is a non-profit organization, although its business and marketing practices are
> indistinguishable from that of a commercial gTLD.]
> 
> >From the .MD site:
> 
> Domain Name Trust, Inc registers and renews each name in the .md registry for a
> sum of $299 per annum. This cost is made up of an annual license fee payable to
> Moldova and an administration fee payable to Domain Name Trust, Inc. which
> fees total $35, plus the costs for webhosting and email which totals an
> additional
> $264 per annum. The annual webhosting is costed at $20 per month, or $240 per
> year and provides 4 email address for $ .50 per month or $24.00 per year. This
> cost of name registration and of webhosting of $299 is substantially less than
> registering in other registries because of the low price at which Domain name
> Trust
> provide webhosting.
> 
> [MM note: So, the $299 price includes web hosting, and the actual name renewal is
> $35. Again, tracking the market leader, NSI.  Note that the registry is owned by
> a non-profit organization, namely the government of Moldova.]

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