eco Domain Name Talks at WHD.global 2016
The third and final session of the Domain Name Talks focused on the geoTLDs, and the speakers Anja Elsing from .RUHR Registry – regiodot GmbH & Co. KG, Dirk Krischenowski from dotBERLIN GmbH & Co. KG, Crystal Peterson from Neustar, Inc. (representing .nyc, .melbourne and .sydney), Hartmut Schulz from NetCologne GmbH (representing .koeln and .cologne), and Ronald Schwärzler from punkt.wien GmbH joined Lars Steffen on the podium.
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The speakers presented quite varied business cases, with .nyc requiring a registered address in New York City before approving a URL, and .sydney and .melbourne demanding demonstration of a relationship between the domain and the city. In contrast, the Cologne domains enjoy unrestricted availability. Positive and negative examples were given of companies outside of the city limits making use of the geoTLD: a small airport a considerable distance from Vienna – further than the city’s main airport – wanting to attract customers through the association with the city name; a pub in New York that sells Cologne-brewed beer under a .koeln URL.
All registrars reported good take-up of the geoTLD in their respective cities – the geographical reference is being seen by many local businesses as an advantage in their marketing. However, several of the cities report very slow progress with the city authorities – city governments are large institutions for whom a change of domain name would mean enormous costs for, for example, reprinting all printed material. Rather, the speakers expect to see a changeover occur in conjunction with a redesign of the corporate image at some stage in the future. Some city council services and programs have taken on the new geoTLDs, but these remain isolated cases with forward-thinking marketing managers. Again, the issue of Universal Acceptance raised its ugly head, with several panelists suggesting that the potential lack of accessibility of the new TLDs was inhibiting the take-up by city administration.
One point made by several registrars was that the cost of applying for a geoTLD is prohibitive, and many smaller cities simply cannot afford to do it. Again, the appeal was made for ICANN to reduce the costs of application and processing.
eco session at WHD – Domain Name Talks
- Building Towards Tomorrow’s Internet:
Fixing IDNs, EAI & Universal Acceptance - brandTLDs – The Great Unkowns
- geoTLDs – Added Value for Regions, Cities & Companies?
eco session at WHD – Doing Business in Germany…
- German Business Culture: Do’s and Don’ts
- German Business Culture: Dealing with the Law
- Surveillance in a Digital Society
- Market Consolidation: The German Data Center Market
- Outlook for the German Internet Industry –
Organic & Inorganic Growth Opportunities for Hosting Companies
You want to learn more about Universal Acceptance?
We have a Podcast about UA here.
Photos of the WHD.global sessions can be found here.
