Disagree but thanks for starting the debate
No real upside to Nominet... just the UK in general.
Thanks for posting your views Monkey, even though I disagree, it does encourage healthy debate and sharing ideas / problems on which way the UK namespace should develop.
Disagree as you would expect from somebody has 8,000+ .co.uk domains for sale at £200 -£500, for Nominet to increase prices in UK domains, never mind the £50 pa you put forward.
I see the problems for me and businesses in general, I don't see the upside!
This would change the model of the UK namespace and doesn't take account of the consequences to the UK economy and new businesses;
- UK for being the cheapest country tld to the most expensive - what message is that sending to outside investors that are trying to be attracted to the UK, they would not understand Nominet is not government.
- The prime UK tld's that UK industry require to acquire in the secondary market will go from £5,000 to £20,000 (not as much as renewal fee % but a large absolute).
- The UK namespace is effectively shrinking anyway and there are still suitable FTR UK domains for any organization available that wants to go online.
- For a typical business that owns 10 domains that protect trade name, company names, key products names, hyphens and plurals. The increase in renewal costs goes from £25 pa to £500 pa. So over the next 10 years £5,000 gone, for what purpose or gain for that typical business?
- The business that wants a UK would typically be able to pay a decent domain for £500. And if the renewal fee went up to £50 must of those would be dropped and the new business would be able to acquire it for £50 but the downside is they have to pay the plural etc. and there annual cost even on 5 domains would be £250 pa, it will not take long before the initial saving is eroded.
- Some people with the £500 or less valued domain will not drop them and yet the new business will feel that is still the domain they require, before price £500, after extra renewal costs the price is going to be over £1000.
Domain investing in the UK will just move to another extension and you could see the growth of .com.uk and .net.uk.
Real business will just move to new GLTD's to keep costs down and you will not have a UK namespace of any volume after a few years.
Nominet and the UK government are trying to step in to run/govern the internet and being the 2nd largest country tld helps there credibility and their believe they are right to rule, dropping down the world volume rankings will spoil that plan!
I don't see the suggestion helping the UK economy just making more for a few holders of really prime UK domains that would put up there prices.
Strange that in my opinion there are some merits on new extension like .gb adopting the approach of a large £200 fee to register and then £10 pa to ensure that more names would be available for new businesses for the reg fee.