According to a recent survey on the effects of liberalizing the Internet through new TLDs, 18% of survey respondants believed that their registrar should govern the “new look Internet”, while the same number believe that ICANN should be responsible for the distribution of new TLDs. Some believe the UK government should decide who can have a new TLD and 12% say it’s down to “society”. There was no mention of Nominet.
This really made me think about Nominet’s visibility with the much-touted “wider stakeholder community” and about endusers’ perceptions of a registrar/webhosting company’s responsibilities. It seems to me that a high percentage of the wider stakeholder community appears to view their registrar/webhosting company as having a key role in their experience of “online”. The vast majority would have registered their domains with a registrar/webhost and not with a registry and so, are quick to link registration and domain issues with their domain supplier. This is, of course, not surprising. What does surpise me however, is that despite this, almost one fifth of respondants were quick to point the finger at ICANN in the international arena, but their registrar/webhost on a national level – they appear to have had no exposure to the managing body of .uk; Nominet.
This report, underlined for me, the key role that registrars and webhosts play in the .uk space. They operate at the coalface of Nominet’s target demographic (endusers, wider stakeholder community), they absorb all the associated costs of such interaction (hypercompetition in registration and webhost prices, inflating staff costs, hosting costs, etc.), they are deemed to be responsible for wider issues by the registrants as this survey underscores, and yet they are, in my opinion, underrepresented in the decision-making and policy-forming structures at Nominet.
If Nominet are to ensure wide stakeholder representation and involvement in policy decisions moving forward, they are going to need to find a scaleable and efficient way of achieving this interaction. It is my opinion that Nominet could leverage their registrar membership very effectively in this area and that registrar interests should be represented at Board level if they are to truly succeed in reaching out to the endusers of .uk and to reflect the needs and realities of the .uk registrant base in their policies and strategy.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: buy domains, domain names, domains, enduser, governance, Nominet, Nominet board, registrar, sell domains, stakeholder, webhosting
