.wales – please fill in the Nominet consultation

[Stephen]

The Nominet consultation for .wales and .cymru closes on Thursday 28th February 2013, so please act now, to have your say.

http://www.domainforwales.org.uk/content/have-your-say

or email [email protected]

Nominet is consulting on its proposals for the new internet domains for Wales. The plans for .cymru and .wales domains have huge potential to provide significant cultural, economic and social benefits in Wales.

The question you have to ask yourself is should Nominet be doing this at all?

If NO, please let Nominet know now.

If the answer is YES, what are the implications for Nominet and the potential for the draining of its resources and unrecovered costs if not handled transparently and properly.

Nominet to get to the stage they have would have in my estimation committed over £1 million in ICANN fees, Impact study,
Cost of Nominet staff and Management in the proposal, consultation and planning for .wales.

Why didn’t Nominet persuade the Welsh government to foot the
upfront bills and let them recover it from future domain sales?

Should they persuade the Welsh government to take over the .wales
project and repay Nominet’s costs to date?

Will the Nominet upfront costs (£1m) be recovered from domain sales,
before they start giving it away to be ringfenced for welsh society?

What is the basis that Nominet future costs will be passed over to .wales?

What consideration was given to .wales.uk and .cymru.uk which would have costed a fraction of the cost?

What if .wales makes a loss?

Nominet state .wales will benefit welsh economy but every winner there is a loser and that will
in the majority of cases would be other parts of the UK, as no new wealth would be created.
So nominet would just be helping to redistribute business within the Uk favouring welsh businesses?

Is it legal under EU law to have the restrictions they intend to impose?

Was part of the £5 million Nominet spend on infastructure upgrade at the end of last year,
in any way to do with .wales and will that ever be recovered?

The surplus (if any) from .wales will be given to welsh charities/society only according to Nominet,
not for the greater good of the UK namespace.

How many .co.uk and .org.uk registrants currently have a Wales address?
to ascertain the base figure of .wales domain demand, if all moved across.

What rights does any .co.uk or .org.uk owner have to get the .wales domain that would correspond with their current domain?

Good news that DNSSEC is only optional for .wales and no malware protection
is suggested as opposed to the compulsory usage of both in the .uk proposal!

Bad news 4 auction phases? (if split premium and landrush)

 

[Nigel]

Yes I agree with your idea to start a new thread on this. Why are nominet sticking their oar in here. Why should they subsidise a competing domain name? It is certainly not for the benefit of Nominet's existing registrants whose money they have already used to start this project.

Personally I can't see the domain will be of any great assistance to the Welsh economy anyway - it will be mainly defensive registrations i.e. just another domain you have to register to protect your brand. So just more cost and hassle. Yes they'll be a few nice ones like holidays.wales but apart from tourism, I think a lot of businesses will not want to trade from a .wales. It should have been left to the Welsh assembly to run this. I don't suppose they wanted to stump up the money to pay up front and for the ongoing costs. Nominet have to give us full costings on this. No normal business would launch an expensive project like this without giving shareholders an idea of the cost involved.

 

[Stephen]

Economic Study report for .wales

.....Personally I can't see the domain will be of any great assistance to the Welsh economy anyway - it will be mainly defensive registrations i.e. just another domain you have to register to protect your brand. So just more cost and hassle. Yes they'll be a few nice ones like holidays.wales but apart from tourism, I think a lot of businesses will not want to trade from a .wales. .....

Agree.

There is an Economic Study report if you follow the About link from home page to:

http://www.domainforwales.org.uk/content/economic-study

You can download, what they believe it will do for Wales.

 

[Nigel]

Agree.

There is an Economic Study report if you follow the About link from home page to:

http://www.domainforwales.org.uk/content/economic-study

You can download, what they believe it will do for Wales.

Thanks for that Stephen. There are some estimated costs there - but seems very vague to me - using data supplied by ICANN and .nyc campaigners (New York City Council). Anyway the costs are considerable:

"On the cost side, the first element is the cost of providing new TLDs. This can be considerable. ICANN estimates the annual operating cost of a registry at $2 million. This includes both the cost of providing the necessary technical infrastructure and the administration. In practice, these tasks can be split between different organisations. The technical infrastructure represents the bigger part of the cost as registries need relatively few staff to operate."

So that is $2m annually just to operate the extension. Then there is the marketing side of things, which I believe has already started. New York City estimate "millions of dollars" Listen to this:

"Finally, significant marketing expenditures may be needed for the new geo-TLDs. A campaigner for a “.nyc” TLD said the following about the likely cost of the new geo-TLD at a hearing at New York City Council: “We estimate in the millions of dollars, especially for the marketing side. “Build it and they will come” is just not a good business model for a new Top Level Domain” (New York City Council, 2009)."

And then you've got the really expensive registration fees (i.e. compared to the .co.uk). I can see this as another reason nominet want to introduce the really expensive direct.uk domain. They'll probably price the .wales at around the same level - just to try to get a decent level of uptake and to say to the Welsh people - our new .uk is also around this price level. Here's what New York say about reg fees:

"For users, subscription fees are relatively cheap at around $25 – $50 (€18-€36, £16 – £31) per website every two years (New York City Council, 2009), depending on service levels (higher charges may apply for specialist domains)."

I'm sorry but these fees are not 'relatively cheap' compared to the annual cost of a .co.uk at around £3. At this cost very few individuals would want to register a .wales. A lot of sole traders and small businesses would also be put off. They are in fact horrendously expensive (compared to .co.uk and even .com) and they have to be - because who is going to pay the annual $2m dollar charge and the 'millions' in marketing. I can see .wales being a financial disaster for nominet. And we'll be the ones picking up the tab. Did stakeholders/Tagholders ever vote on this?

 

[Stephen]

financial disaster?

... I can see .wales being a financial disaster for nominet. And we'll be the ones picking up the tab....

Without the numbers for costs and expected registrations, neither which I can find on the .wales website or consultation document, it is not possible to know if Nominet are being realistic about .wales.

I hope Nominet could be pushed for more transparency on the numbers but efforts on .uk to get more information proved not to be successful.

My instincts are that apart from domain brand protection there will not be a big take up by domainers as the sales after market and the user market is small and for developed affiliate or directory visitor usage will be very low.

Plus trust in Nominet amongst many UK domainers may be dented due to their handling of the .uk proposal and so reduce the appetite for .wales take up.

Apart from a few 1,000 key terms, business protection and a few email addresses I dont think .wales will take off and therefore conclude it could be a big long term financial disaster for Nominet, best they off load to the welsh government as soon as possible or go for the cheaper .wales.uk and .cymru.uk before it is to late!

 

[DarrenTSO]

Nominet already operate a registry. The cost to operate an additional top level domain is negligible since the cost of operating a registry is largely going to be fixed costs of staffing and infrastructure. The cost to operate this (aside from the ICANN application fee?) is going to be no different than the cost of running .me.uk or .ltd.uk since Nominet have everything in place already.

I personally don't think that .wales will be the largest registry in the world, but it is supported by the Welsh Assembly and may be a boost for Welsh businesses to advertise their "Welsh-ness".

 

[Stephen]

costs?

Nominet already operate a registry. The cost to operate an additional top level domain is negligible since the cost of operating a registry is largely going to be fixed costs of staffing and infrastructure. The cost to operate this (aside from the ICANN application fee?) is going to be no different than the cost of running .me.uk or .ltd.uk since Nominet have everything in place already.....

It all depends on how you allocate costs.

An extreme example would be take all Nominet annual fixed costs (£10m +) state you are running 2 domain spaces , UK and Wales and divide all those fixed costs by 2.

That is not the answer but neither is take pure marginal costs that can be fully attributed to .wales, the answer would be a combination of cost apportionment and costs incurred just on that namespace.

Will nominet introduce time sheets to see where time is spend? Who is going to be responsible for time and cost of doing so, theoritically it should be 100% .wales as without them time sheets would not be needed.

Take cost of Nominet CEO based on package cost of £300,000 pa should be charged out at £1,500 per chargeable day.

Not to mention it would take £1m+ of costs to get the .wales in the first place.

The ICANN starting fee would be $50,000 per year for .wales and .cymru.

If the cost to run another domain namespace is negligible why didn't Nominet get .LONDON?

 

[Sound]

I believe this is definitely the kind of project Nominet should be getting involved with and using the money that they have as a not for profit organisation to fund any extra costs involved.

People in Wales will take to the new extensions

Nominet cannot afford to stand still and watch others move forward.

 

[Nigel]

Nominet already operate a registry. The cost to operate an additional top level domain is negligible since the cost of operating a registry is largely going to be fixed costs of staffing and infrastructure. The cost to operate this (aside from the ICANN application fee?) is going to be no different than the cost of running .me.uk or .ltd.uk since Nominet have everything in place already.

I personally don't think that .wales will be the largest registry in the world, but it is supported by the Welsh Assembly and may be a boost for Welsh businesses to advertise their "Welsh-ness".

If the extra costs are going to be negligible why aren't they saying that in the report that they produced. It is in their own report that I obtained those figures. It seems to me they have no idea of the costs so they've simply quoted the ICANN & New York City Council figures. Running .wales will not be the same as Nominet producing another extension at the third level of .uk. It will be a completely separate registry. Separate phone lines, separate staff (pensions and benefits), separate budgets, separate accounts. I don't believe nominet staff will be able to put on different hats each day depending on where the phone calls, mail, emails come from. If the Welsh Assembly wanted a .wales they should be running it, and funding it - not using money accumulated from .uk registrants.

 

[noonoo1]

I was hoping that the Welsh gov would run this themselves.

 

[Stephen]

I was hoping that the Welsh gov would run this themselves.

I see your location is Cardiff, what do you think the absolute number of domains with any category breakdown, that will be registered in .wales?

Do you think it will put people off .wales, that Nominet is based in Oxford?

 

[Stephen]

form or email?

.wales is a sideshow to the direct.uk main event, so a different thread is definitely more productive than continuing that discussion in this one. Worth noting in passing that the .wales consultation doesn't allow people to say "no" to .wales as a concept, even as the last part of the last question

Agree and point noted about the structure of questions in the .wales consultation form, that is why I sent my feedback via email.

 

[Stephen]

No longer renew their UK domains?

Just thought Nominet income from .co.uk and .org.uk might drop because people moving over to .wales, that have a welsh connection or the domain is wales centric, will no longer renew their UK domains?

 

[DarrenTSO]

At the very least, you'd retain your .uk and 301 re-direct to your .wales if you wanted to primarily use that extension.

 

[Stephen]

At the very least, you'd retain your .uk and 301 re-direct to your .wales if you wanted to primarily use that extension.

I agree that would be the sensible thing to do so your search engine rankings should also transfer.

But I wonder how many domain owners understand that?

The .co.uk renewal would be a small cost to keep your options open, so maybe not so many would cancel their UK domains after all.

 

[bulkcorn]

At the very least, you'd retain your .uk and 301 re-direct to your .wales if you wanted to primarily use that extension.

This will likely be the case with most people.

The whole idea, in my opinion, is a waste of money! Is there any need to create more confusion in the UK webspace? I am not sure how profitable the extension will be unless the regs have got a £20ish price tag on them. What's gonna be next? dot EastAnglia? or dot WestMidlands? Is there a dot Gaelic already, or is that in the works too? :-?

 

[Stephen]

...The whole idea, in my opinion, is a waste of money! Is there any need to create more confusion in the UK webspace? I am not sure how profitable the extension will be unless the regs have got a £20ish price tag on them. What's gonna be next? dot EastAnglia? or dot WestMidlands? Is there a dot Gaelic already, or is that in the works too? :-?

Please make sure Nominet know that by emailing: [email protected]

or completing the consultation form at:
http://www.domainforwales.org.uk/content/have-your-say

Nominet have not stated what the likely cost of .wales registration will be,
I have written to them requesting their best guess and are awaiting their response.

 

[Nigel]

This will likely be the case with most people.

The whole idea, in my opinion, is a waste of money! Is there any need to create more confusion in the UK webspace? I am not sure how profitable the extension will be unless the regs have got a £20ish price tag on them. What's gonna be next? dot EastAnglia? or dot WestMidlands? Is there a dot Gaelic already, or is that in the works too? :-?

You're right - it is a waste of money - but not for the Welsh Assembly. All of this cost is underwritten by Nominet and from existing registrants i.e. us.

This project is the equivalent of British Airways setting up a subsidiary - lets call it Welsh Airways. They're going to pay all the costs of setting up, they're going to subsidise all the flights, Welsh Airways will take business away from British Airways, and if it just happened to ever make a profit, they'll give it away.

 

[Edwin]

I believe Nominet may have had a slightly different agenda in that they must have figured "if not us, then somebody else" i.e. .wales may well have been going to happen *anyway* and Nominet wanted to make sure that if the money's not going into the left (*.uk) pocket then it's going into the right (.wales) pocket.

That's basically what happens when you open new GTLD to ANY string you like!

Having said that, do I believe it's the best use of Nominet resources? Probably not.

On the other hand, it's arguably better than just throwing the surplus away by giving it to the Nominet Trust directly (sorry, I don't consider that "donations" that are obligatory constitute as donations at all - and we're all forced via Nominet to hand money to N.T. every time we register or renew a domain, whether we want to or not)

The main deal about .wales is not .wales itself (it's a very minor extension that few people will give two hoots about either way) but the fact that Nominet seem to have put a LOT more effort into the "background story" (prior research) for .wales than they ever did for .uk, even though the latter will immediately impact 10,000,000 domain owners and the former none at all.

 

[bulkcorn]

Please make sure Nominet know that by emailing: [email protected]

or completing the consultation form at:
http://www.domainforwales.org.uk/content/have-your-say

Nominet have not stated what the likely cost of .wales registration will be,
I have written to them requesting their best guess and are awaiting their response.

Will do, Stephen! I just hope it's not another 1 hour of 'you may tell us what you think by filling this form but we've already made up our mind anyway'! :lol: