.wales – please fill in the Nominet consultation

[Nigel]

Agree with you there Graeme. Certainly something strange about this whole affair. dotcym.org were expecting to run the Welsh domain until the great Battleship Nominet blew them out of the water. In April 2012 Nominet were making great promises - nine jobs and an office in Wales and a fully bilingual service.

Then we read, 8 months later, that they're actually advertising for an 'outsourced' English and Welsh customer service team. And Edwin's found a resource plan showing just 8 hours customer service at launch and 4 hours after 6 months. So what do you believe? I think it will be costly and I think a lot of ongoing costs will simply be buried - existing staff doing a lot of the work - far more than 4 hours a week - but we'll never know so it will never be costed out correctly. I don't expect that Nominet will ever open an office in Wales with nine staff though.

 

[jasman]

I think Nominet have missed a trick here - they forgot to release .co.wales domains first, then .wales a year or so later

 

[Systreg]

I think Nominet have missed a trick here - they forgot to release .co.wales domains first, then .wales a year or so later

Nah, that's the sort of thing an out and out scammer would do, hold on.....

 

[Stephen]

.co.wales?

I think Nominet have missed a trick here - they forgot to release .co.wales domains first, then .wales a year or so later

No to really maximize revenues it would be .wales.uk first then .co.wales with a .org.wales

 

[Stephen]

Should Nominet proceed with .Wales?

More serioulsy, the posts on real costs, anti-competitive practises , dotcym.org , new Nominet welsh office with 9 staff, alternative .wales.uk option, what will be the uptake?, unknown budget costs for future marketing, if cross subsidized then less spent on UK good causes etc make me think that it is worth the debate and feeding it back to Nominet.

I'm looking to produce a document "Should Nominet proceed with .Wales?" which puts all the points in one document, which others outside the domaining world of Acorn such as the media, MP's, other registrars, charities etc can see what is going on.

The document "What is wrong with the Nominet .uk proposal?" could not have been done
with that the effort, debate, comments, research of Acorn members.
Please help again by providing the time to look at .wales.

Please feel free to email me at [email protected] if you dont want to post here.

 

[Edwin]

Surely going out there seeking to draw attention to .wales risks muddying the media waters - VERY easy for the already quite domainer-hostile media to say "Ah, those cybersqu- er mumble mumble I mean domain investors - they're just against EVERYTHING!" and damage the cause of direct.uk.

Put another way, if you have an invading army of 10,000 on one border, and 3 small children armed with sticks on the other border, which border would you choose to defend?

 

[Stephen]

muddy the waters for .uk?

Surely going out there seeking to draw attention to .wales risks muddying the media waters - VERY easy for the already quite domainer-hostile media to say "Ah, those cybersqu- er mumble mumble I mean domain investors - they're just against EVERYTHING!" and damage the cause of direct.uk.

Put another way, if you have an invading army of 10,000 on one border, and 3 small children armed with sticks on the other border, which border would you choose to defend?

It is not my intention to damage any efforts to damage the cause of getting Nominet to reconsider the direction it takes with .uk. In fact a lot of my time still goes into gathering information and research ready for the next phase, when Nominet release .uk, as the fight will not be over when/if they do.

I think the media look at the arguments regardless from they come from and see if they stand up and then they go ahead with a story.

I certainly do not regard myself as againist change especially in the fast changing domain name space but I would like the UK name change direction to be in a positive and transparent direction.

I understand your point of view (but cannot still get my head around the 2 battle fronts?) and I will do my best to ensure my actions don't muddy the waters for .uk change.

 

[Nigel]

Edwin - I think the launch of .wales and .uk are closely interlinked. I'm convinced that .wales will need huge subsidy from .uk registrants. That has already happened and I expect that Nominet have already spent well over £500,000 of our money on the Welsh project. Is it a co-incidence that they were committed to spending all this money on .wales and .cymru and then they announce the proposals to launch .uk at up to £20 a year? Nominet need money and they don't mind stitching up their existing .co.uk registrants to tap this new possible supply of money. So what happens if .uk doesn't get launched? Perhaps they'll run .wales and .cymru on the tightest budget they can and use existing staff, as far as possible, to provide the service.

So on one hand they are reported to have said in two leading Welsh newspapers that they'll open an office in Wales with nine jobs and a fully billingual service. Whereas they now say, just 8 months later, that they're looking to oursource the billingual customer service and spend just 4 hours a week on customer service (after 6 months) with these resources coming now from existing staff! I wonder if its just sinking in at Nominet HQ that they might not have the funds to provide the service they promised in April 2012. Perhaps they're hedging their bets in case the money making .uk doesn't get launched. No wonder Nominet has lost the trust of most people on here. I think it is very important that they are held to account on .wales and .cymru.

Graeme earlier pasted information from the oft on anti competitive practices, subsidies, and abuse of a dominant position. He suggested that someone might like to refer this to the OFT. I think it's very likely that will happen.

 

[Nigel]

Interesting little article with a bit of background information about how Welsh Government turned down the bid from dotcym.org and turned to Nominet - says the decision was not welcomed in Wales. They interviewed Lesley Cowley - not a lot of info but she says there are 340,000 welsh registrations and 100 welsh registrars. Higher than I imagined.

http://www.internetnews.me/2012/03/03/nominet-to-apply-for-wales-and-cymru/

 

[Stephen]

Cross charges?

Thus, on the staff side at least, their costs (both initial and ongoing) to run .wales will be utterly insignificant in relation to the overall size of their operation.

I was looking into the track record of Nominet and explored the accounts of Nominet Trust to see how good Nominet may be at cross charging seperate entities.

Nominet Trust 30th April 2011 accounts show:
Donation received from Nominet £5,000,000
Investment income £ 1112,921
Grants payable £3,053,120
Governance costs £13,742
Surplus for year £2,046,059

Cash at Bank £8,619,245

Nominet Trust operates from the same building as Nominet - any cross rent?
Trust has team of 11 according to website - do they all work for free?
http://www.nominettrust.org.uk/who-we-are/meet-the-team
Website design and running costs?
Communication costs?
Marketing and PR costs?
Legal fees?
Travel expenses?
Printing?
etc?

Accounts link: http://www.nominettrust.org.uk/who-we-are/annual-reports

I don't aim to stop the good works of Nominet Trust, it is the lack of transparancy at Nominet that is of concern and how that will manifest itself with .wales?

I hope somebody can explain the funding of these costs and how Nominet/Nominet Trust discloses them fully.

 

[GreyWing]

I don't aim to stop the good works of Nominet Trust, it is the lack of transparancy at Nominet that is of concern and how that will manifest itself with .wales?

I hope somebody can explain the funding of these costs and how Nominet/Nominet Trust discloses them fully.

.wales would not be run by Nominet UK Limited (main one), It would be run by Nominet Registrars Limited as far as I know.

 

[websaway]

My first post on this topic.
I don't really want to dilute my attention to the attrocity being attempted by Nominet in releasing the .uk in spite of the space having already been sold to co.uk owners.


But frankly if they want to buy timbuktu I'm not sure I have any say in the matter, and if they lose money then that's something they will eventually be accountable for.
This is clearly a new geo extension and it would not surprise me if others followed but they would not be able to compete with the uk brand.

It's up to co.uk owners to promote and strengthen the co.uk brand but if .uk is released then that would not be an option.

 

[Nigel]

I was looking into the track record of Nominet and explored the accounts of Nominet Trust to see how good Nominet may be at cross charging seperate entities.

Nominet Trust 30th April 2011 accounts show:
Donation received from Nominet £5,000,000
Investment income £ 1112,921
Grants payable £3,053,120
Governance costs £13,742
Surplus for year £2,046,059

Cash at Bank £8,619,245

Nominet Trust operates from the same building as Nominet - any cross rent?
Trust has team of 11 according to website - do they all work for free?
http://www.nominettrust.org.uk/who-we-are/meet-the-team
Website design and running costs?
Communication costs?
Marketing and PR costs?
Legal fees?
Travel expenses?
Printing?
etc?

Accounts link: http://www.nominettrust.org.uk/who-we-are/annual-reports

I don't aim to stop the good works of Nominet Trust, it is the lack of transparancy at Nominet that is of concern and how that will manifest itself with .wales?

I hope somebody can explain the funding of these costs and how Nominet/Nominet Trust discloses them fully.

Great post - you've hit the nail on the head there!
I too have no confidence that all the costs of .wales and .cymre, will be properly split and accounted for.

 

[Stephen]

It's up to co.uk owners to promote and strengthen the co.uk brand but if .uk is released then that would not be an option.

Thanks for entering the debate.

Agree .uk is more important but once .wales is released it not be possible to reverse, whoever is held to account.
So debate, action and investigation is required now on .wales.

Nominet to date have had several campaigns and I believe they have one now promoting .co.uk with 6 unknown UK registrars.

Nominet does try to promote .co.uk as a brand and with more focus they could acheive even more success, if their attention is drawn on a new shinny .wales maybe .co.uk will not receive so much effort and attention?

But when a competing tld is added how will they resolve the conflict of interest, will they spend the same on .wales and whatever comes next?

 

[Stephen]

.wales would not be run by Nominet UK Limited (main one), It would be run by Nominet Registrars Limited as far as I know.

Could you please explain why if possible that would be the case?

Also could you please shed any light on the corporate structure of ownership of these various nominet companies?

 

[GreyWing]

Could you please explain why if possible that would be the case?

Also could you please shed any light on the corporate structure of ownership of these various nominet companies?

I'll send you the docs over in the next few hours mate. As far as I know Nominet said ICANN required it, I have no reason to doubt it but I don't know why either. The other company is owned by Nominet UK Ltd, certain directors of Nominet UK are also directors of this second company.

 

[DarrenTSO]

Could you please explain why if possible that would be the case?

Also could you please shed any light on the corporate structure of ownership of these various nominet companies?

Not all Nominet members are ICANN accredited (and no ICANN accreds as based in Wales AFAIK), so in order to ensure that the extension is a) available to be registered through Welsh registrars, and b) available to be registered through all the current .uk registrars Nominet themselves had to achieve ICANN accreditation to allow .wales to be sold through them and on to non-ICANN accredited members.

 

[Nigel]

.wales survey conducted by Nominet

Interested to read about this survey which was commissioned by Nominet and published on WalesOnline.co.uk. Just 30% of Welsh businesses surveyed thought .wales would help promote their business outside Wales and just 20% for the .cymru. Yet it seems the report put a positive spin on these figures.

"Of those businesses that were questioned for the report around 30% thought that a ‘.wales’ domain name would help promote their business outside Wales and internationally, whilst around 20% thought that a ‘.cymru’ domain name would have this effect.

The report suggests that £2bn in sales could be gained by businesses using a ‘.wales’ domain name at the expense of those using current domain names such as ‘.com’ and ‘.co.uk’."

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/n...es-cymru-or-wales-a-good-idea-91466-29745237/

 

[Stephen]

.wales ICANN application

The application form to ICANN can be found at:

http://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1419

Note the Applicant is "Nominet UK" rather than the Welsh government
wheras .LONDON applicant is Dot London Domains Limited not the registrar they are using to perform the functions.

some snipets from the .wales application:

Nominet has received the necessary statements of non-objection from the Welsh Government and from the UK Government.

The operating model for dot WALES will be an open TLD, primarily operating on a first come, first served basis, which is price-competitive with existing mass market TLDs.

It will enjoy significant local market penetration and relevant local content, used by businesses, organisations and individuals to promote their association with Wales. There will be high levels of domain use, rather than speculative or defensive registrations and registrations will therefore be sustainable and successful in the long term, with high levels of domain renewals.

The dot WALES TLD is being designed to provide a low-cost and open registry which is highly competitive with existing gTLDs and ccTLDs.

We will ensure that there is broad market awareness of the dot WALES domain via online and more traditional media to ensure stakeholders know about and understand the benefits of using the TLD.

Additionally, the dot WALES TLD will utilise mechanisms to raise awareness through proactive contact with business and industry stakeholders who are registered companies through the UK’s Companies House to advise and assist with their decision-making, limiting unintended consequences of a lack of awareness.

Nominet is committed to a pricing model in which wholesale charges for dot WALES domains are set at a level which is competitive with comparable charges for existing mass market gTLDs. Given that this is crucial to the success of dot WALES we do not think it is necessary to make binding contractual commitments on future pricing but we will, as required by the Registry Agreement, offer registrants advance notice of price changes.

We will offer 1-10 year variable registration periods in line with standard practice.


In addition, we have set aside in our model appropriate funds to provide additional marketing effort to promote the new domain. This may take the form of assistance with the development and delivery of specific marketing campaigns by the channel, or it could take the form of a quantity discounting arrangement as an introductory incentive to registrants.

Customer service for dot WALES registrars, registrants and other stakeholders will be provided by a team of four full time equivalents bi-lingual support advisors based in Wales. This team will be supplemented by our team of 24 customer service advisors based in Oxford to ensure resilience and 24-7-365 emergency cover.

The implementation of EPP for dot WALES will be based upon our current EPP service for dot UK and will be deployed on the same architecture as the dot UK domain.

We have run the dot UK EPP for the last 8 years and the service is used by 900 registrars, representing over 6 million dot UK domains out of the total of 10 million on the register.

The EPP service for dot WALES will be deployed on dedicated virtual servers in our datacentre. The servers making up the dot WALES EPP service will have their own dedicated resources as shown in Figure 24.1 of the attachment Q24_SRS_Figures.pdf.

Based on all projections we are more than confident that the capacity and redundancy of the SRS system for the dot WALES domain, with an expected 40,000 domain names after 2 years, will allow for similar performance figures to the dot UK domain

When a domain name is in the ʺregisteredʺ state, any registrar will be able to issue a transfer request to move sponsorship of the domain to them. Transfer requests take up to 5 days to complete, during which time the registrar of record will be able to reject the transfer and prevent it from completing.

 

[dotCymru]

I was one of the directors of dotCYM Ltd that was started about 6 years ago in order to apply for and manage a TLD for the Welsh community. For 4 years during a coalition Government, a Plaid Cymru Minister was responsible for the TLD issue and he supported working with a Welsh not-for-profit company answerable to the Welsh community. However, the civil servant responsible for the TLD was against applying for a TLD but if it was going to happen then she was determined to ensure that Nominet owned and controlled the TLD.

After the latest elections, Labour had a majority and the new Labour Minister, Edwina Hart, refused to meet or discuss our previous 5 years of work with us, decided that no finanical support would come from the Welsh Government and that we would have to compete against Nominet in an RFP. I've submitted a FoI request asking for the communication between Nominet and the civil servants in order to try to understand the relationship between them and how Nominet would have persuaded the civil servants to give away the community's TLD in a manner that the Scots, Basques, Galicians, Catalans, Bretons, etc. wouldn't have dreamt of doing. The response was a refusal to release that information since it could lead to campaigns against the government.

I've had nothing to do with TLDs for nearly a year now but I heard that there was a discussion on this forum so I thought I'd join. If you have any questions for me then I'm happy to share any information I have with you.