The 2nd day of the conference: marketing and government relations in the domain industry, business models of CCTLD rergistries

The 2nd day of the conference started with a session “Marketing and market education, government relations”. Wim Degezelle, CENTR, gave the first presentation. He spoke about the CENTR’s practical experience both in the area of awareness raising and domain market agents’ education. “CENTR is a platform, which enables various national registries to make arrangements, and one of our principal tasks is to maintain communication and assist people to find common ground,” – noted Mr. Degezelle.

Joke Braeken, EURid (.eu), spoke about EU. marketing and e-learning initiatives in domain .eu. “We are a link between various EU states, - said Ms. Braeken, - and regularly organize joint events in various countries. Furthermore, we regularly set joint thematic events, for example, on DNSSEC.” Martin Boyle, Nominet (.uk) spoke about government as the domain industry stakeholder. “People consider the government to be responsible for the infrastructure and the state thereby becomes a stakeholder in development of the Internet and in ensuring the Net’s reliability. We, in turn, make sure domain industry representatives interests do not conflict with government agencies’ ones.” Nataša Djukanović, dotME, presented a business model of domain .me, which isthe national domain zone of Montenegro. “Domain .ME is only 3 years old, but we are ready to share our experience. As of now, the domain boasts of almost 550,000 registered domain names. Only 3.5% of domains in zone .me have been registered by the citizens of Montenegro, all the rest – by the citizens of other countries. Over the last year, we were deeply engaged in the domain awareness activities among end users and now I can assert with confidence that our domain has become digital ambassador of Montenegro.”

Andrey Khvetkevich, DRS.UA, related about principles of success of .ua on the market: “One of our novelties was a free domain pp.ua, which helps users assess the need for a domain name and understand the way they will use it. Then the users can buy a domain name at the commercial domain .ua. In order to accelerate registrars’ transition to the new EPP protocol, we gave them a discount, so that almost 50% of the users are now successfully using the new protocol.” Presentation by Viktoria Bunchuk, RU- CENTER, ended the session. It addressed RU-CENTR’s educational initiatives in the sphere of creating websites for public agencies. “We begin education of governmental bodies with the basics, said Viktoria. – We explain with what the domain name differs from the website, how to register and extend a domain, how to choose between domain zones .RU and .РФ, why to register several versions of a name and how to protect oneself from online fraud. Only by assisting governmental bodies to understand the principles of the domain industry functioning, we can have a productive dialogue with them.”

Loic Damilaville, AFNIC, opened a session on business models for ccTLD registries. He spoke about the ecosystem of domains .fr and .re and about the market’s evolution thanks to the launch of the new top-level domains. “I believe that with the launch of new domains, domain .com will no longer be dominant in the market. There will be new communication channels,” – noted he. Nurlan Issin, KazNIC, briefed attendees about the operational specifics of the Kazakh domain .kz. “KazNIC performs primarily technical functions ensuring the functioning of domain kz., and the Ministry of Communication and Information of Kazakhstan is its regulatory body. As of today, the domain has 12 accredited registrars, and domain .kz boasts of 61,688 registered domain names, where 85% of them were registered by the citizens of Kazakhstan. Moreover, ICANN recently approved Kazakhstan’s application for the IND domain - .каз,” – said Mr. Issin.

Tatiana Forsyuk, Hostmaster, spoke about routine realities and prospects of domain zone .ua. “Every 20th Internet user in Ukraine owns his (her) domain,” – noted Tatiana, - however, registration of a second-level domain is available solely to the trade mark owners. Specifically, the TLD has a distributive system of domain names, which includes, for instance, a general zone com.ua, a “geographic” zone kiev.ua, among others. Presently, we are reorganizing domain .ua and introducing amendments into the registration procedures.” The conference was ended by Nazgul Kurmanalieva, Internetpolicy.kg, who presented a review of the national registry .kg.