RE: Meeting with .mu registrars

From: S Moonesamy <sm+mu_at_elandsys.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2015 12:02:40 -0700

Hi Tewin,

I'll comment as a representative of the Mauritius Internet Users.

At 10:45 13-03-2015, Icy Evolution Web Hosting wrote:
>1. I consider the $50 fee for .mu domain expensive too, when we know that a
>USD is nearly Rs 36 today. As registrars we have no choice than to increase
>the domain retail price so that we will at least have a small margin of
>profit. We should be able to pay in Euro just like before or at least use a
>fixed price in Mauritian Rs. It's a pain to keep adjusting our MUR retail
>price based on the fluctuation of the USD.

The .mu ccTLD is a monopoly. I do not think than an argument that a
monopoly should be run on a for-profit basis where the consumer does
not have any say would be considered as valid even if all the local
.mu registrars agree to that.

The price of a .mu domain name today is Rs 1800; the price of a .com
is Rs 558. The justification for the .mu being thrice as expensive
is that it may cost a few million rupees to operate the DNS service
for .mu. A quick look at the name servers for .mu would show that it
is unlikely that the DNS service is costing that much.

I would like a .mu domain name to be half that price. The local .mu
registrar tells me that it cannot help me get a lower price. If, for
example, the ICTA figures out how to get me a lower price if I
support a change in .mu, it is to my advantage to support the
ICTA. What if the ICTA does something bad to the local .mu
registrars? Unless what is being done is against my interest, I
would not consider that as a problem. I have previously argued that
users in Mauritius support local businesses. I would stop doing that
if local businesses do not support users in Mauritius.

>2. I agree with Benoit concerning the transfer fee of USD 50 too. When you
>transfer a .com domain, you get a one year renewal together with the
>transfer. In the case of .mu, you have to pay USD 50 to only transfer the
>domain and another renewal price to renew it. My suggestion to the registry
>is to waive this transfer fee or at-least, reduce it to something like
>$10-$15. A transfer fee which is the same as a renewal fee does not make
>sense in my opinion.
>
>3. Accreditation process: As at the last update I had last year, the new
>minimum is now 50 domains, not 20.
>
>4. Grace period: A major problem since even if you miss payment by one day,
>you have to pay thrice the fee to reactivate the domain. I think that the
>registry could have offered at least 1 week of grace period.
>
>Overall: I don't think there is a problem with .mu in itself. There is a
>problem with how the business is being done which penalizes the registrars
>as well as the clients.

Thanks for the above comments. Those could be listed as commercial
problems. The conclusion for the above was that there isn't a
problem with .mu in itself. That can be read as meaning that none of
the above points are major issues and it is not worth spending much
effort on them.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy
Received on Fri Mar 13 2015 - 19:02:58 PST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Mar 13 2015 - 19:09:01 PST