IEDR Cuts .ie Price By 20%
For a non-profit organisation running .ie ccTLD, IEDR made a rather large profit from the high price of .ie domains. Arguably most of this profit went to pay off debts incurred during previous years. Now, a relatively debt-free IEDR has cut the trade price of .ie domains by 20%. Could it be that the impending free-for-all in .eu forced the change?
The Irish hosting industry has been complaining that the .ie price is too high. The launch of .eu gave IEDR the impetus for change. The .eu gTLD is still in the Sunrise phase 1 where registrations are limited to owners of trademarks and geographic rights. The real knife-fight will not happen until April 2006 when the .eu is a free for all.
If IEDR is to cope with the onslaught of .eu, it has to make changes. One of these, importantly, is the pricing of .ie domains. The second is a change in the board of IEDR. The board of IEDR does not have any members with operational expertise in the domain/hosting business. It is hardly a reservoir of domain expertise. The management of IEDR, as distinct from the board, is more in tune with the industry. The .eu launch may bring some of the changes that the industry would like to see with .ie ccTLD. With the price cuts, IEDR may consider that .ie is competing with .eu gTLD. However the real opponent is .com and IEDR is unlikely to cut prices that to make .ie a competitor for .com gTLD. And of course there is another question - will Irish hosters pass on the price cuts?
Tags: IrishBlogs,IEDR, Domains, Internet Statistics , Webhosting,.EU
Written by John McCormac on December 15th, 2005 with 3 comments.
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