Deep Thoughts: A Registrar View of ccTLD Registries

Slide 1: thoughts from a registrar On Registries and Country Codes

Slide 2: - CIRA Board (.ca) - providing registration services since 1993 (first reg: punk.com) - GNSO Council, lots of TF work - Implemented first Global Registrar/Reseller system (OpenSRS) e. - Implemented St. Vincent and M Afilias EPP Registry back-end (LibertyRMS). ..but not a techie!

Slide 3: 6000 Resellers 110 Countries Mostly non-U.S. 200 employees lots of domain $$$ lots of other $$$ (email, hosting, etc.) Most everything wholesale Also “OpenHRS”

Slide 4: Tucows Business

Slide 5: .name .tv .eu .ch .cc .lt .de .biz .net .be .es .us .cn .at .info .mobi .ca .org .nl .uk .fr .com .dk .com.mx

Slide 7: Where we think the market is going.

Slide 8: “Secondary” market. Messaging.

Slide 9: “Secondary market” = Selling fewer high quality names to more people.

Slide 10: Extensions matter less than second levels.

Slide 11: getareallyreallylongnam ethatnoonecanrememb er.com?

Slide 12: or stillavailable.im?

Slide 13: ...or shared.alreadygotit.as?

Slide 14: Users value universal relevance, over implied semantics.

Slide 15: rader.ca is better than raderfamily.com is better than rader.blogspot.com is bettr than www.flickr.com/photos/radr

Slide 16: Takeaway: Ensuring availability is strategic. Ownership is strictly a tactical consideration.

Slide 17: This means continuing to sell new and shared names...

Slide 18: ...in conjunction with messaging based services.

Slide 19: We would love to make every TLD available to our customers.

Slide 20: How we pick.

Slide 21: Some registries look like this to a registrar...

Slide 23: Some look like this...

Slide 25: We look for simplicity.

Slide 26: Policy. rules are good. simple rules are better.

Slide 27: human readable translatable meaningful relevant

Slide 28: Technology. apis are good. simple apis are better.

Slide 29: manual processing sucks the most. email templates suck less. RRP sucks less. EPP still sucks, but less than RRP. non-standard *anything* sucks the most.

Slide 30: Practice. automation is bliss.

Slide 31: - desire registrar automation - can it interface with the registrar’s registration systems? - finance? customer service? administration? - back-end can be manual as long as processes are scalable. - aka “human turk” or “hamster wheel” model

Slide 32: Pricing Models.

Slide 33: Most predominant (easiest)

Slide 34: Less predominant (hardest)

Slide 35: $0 Sweet Spot = $6 - $15 $6 Auction $9 $15 $25 $40 Premium

Slide 36: Keeping Customers Happy.

Slide 37: 1. What does this arcane process mean? 2. Who is sending me these emails? 3. How to a transfer to/from another registrar?

Slide 38: Thank you. ross@tucows.com 416.538.5492 http://www.byte.org