Direct.uk is ongoing.....

[websaway]

I'm obviously speculating, how can I know more than most current board members about their intentions?

I am looking at their outreach, their communications, their lack of candour in certain situations and transparency with the wider membership and the fact that they have launched this initiative without consulting first. Then consulted. Got a resounding 'don't do it' from the stakeholders. And have now reopened the issue.

I have also seen documents released under FOI, and I am aware that at least one major registrar that attended a meeting to discuss the .uk issue and was given the impression that it was a done-deal. I am sure if we had all been invited to discuss the idea, we would have been given the same impression.

Thanks for clearing that up for me, it didn't read like you were guessing it read like you had inside information.

 

[Lucien Taylor]

Absolutely, fair question!

 

[addz123]

I think Nominet has been shitting themselves over new gTLDs.

Although Nominet has a monopoly on the UK namespace extension, they're scared that thousands of new gTLDs such as .shop, .photography, .sports etc will dilute the UK market and make .co.uk less of a default domain for UK business.

As such, I think they're trying to find new ways of adding value to a UK extension so that it doesn't disappear in the fog of new gTLDs. By offering something more secure, possibly restricted to UK companies, I think that helps their long term strategy.

Of course, the obvious issue for them is balancing the future of their company with new services whilst placating those customers on .co.uk.

I'm not sure if it's just me but I do see a trend of bigger UK companies using the .com instead of .co.uk (e.g. MoneySupermarket, GoCompare, Sky, nPower etc)

 

[AssetDomains]

Is there a set date yet to when we here anything official on the ongoing consultations

 

[Edwin]

I think Nominet has been shitting themselves over new gTLDs.

Although Nominet has a monopoly on the UK namespace extension, they're scared that thousands of new gTLDs such as .shop, .photography, .sports etc will dilute the UK market and make .co.uk less of a default domain for UK business.

Nominet have done an excellent PR job pretending to be scared of the new GTLD so that the case for direct.uk looks more rational than it really is.

Clearly, they have enough in-house expertise to know that the new GTLD are no real threat to the dual dominance of .com and .co.uk, any more than .net, .org.uk, .org, .eu, .tv, .co, .info, .biz, .cc, .mobi and other pretenders have been.

What people seem to conveniently forget in the new GTLD debate is that there are at least half a dozen extensions apart from .com/.co.uk that are "much more well known" than any new GTLD can hope to be (a decade of use trumps any marketing budget by a single company shouting into the chaos of 1,000 competing new GTLD launches) yet NONE of them have gained much traction in the UK market.

 

[willbon]

Looks like Sedo are already accepting .uk for sale!

;-)


http://www.sedo.com/search/details.php4?domain=eco.uk

Bargain!

 

[Lucien Taylor]

Is there a set date yet to when we here anything official on the ongoing consultations

I think we are awaiting a communique from the board following their meeting this month to finalise a proposition for public consultation to be launched following the June meeting.

We will look very carefully at any policy changes announced during the election voting period after publication of candidate statements. I imagine they will launch the next phase of direct.uk after the July board election. They indicated that they would run a further consultation to address the issues highlighted in the Nom-Announce following the initial consultation, namely security issues, and revised release mechanisms.

 

[mojoco]

Anybody else seeing Nominet showing up in their logfiles again ? I have seen Nominet visiting my sites several times over the last 10 -14 days.