A news item on Netcraft points to a Eurid public statement regarding the new .eu TLD.
The press release could shake up quite a few people in the hosting industry:
Regulation 874/2004 of the European Commission laying down the public policy rules concerning the .eu Top Level Domain states clearly that only registrars accredited by the Registry (EURid) shall be permitted to offer registration services for .eu domain names (see article 4 of the regulation). This means that the offering of services as a “reseller” (as a kind of subcontractor of an accredited registrar or as an intermediary without having concluded an agreement with the Registry in order to become an accredited registrar) is completely excluded.
See full text
Companies such as enom have already been accredited, but it now looks like they will have to sell directly, which goes against their normal modus operandi.
Will this mean that more hosting companies will be forced to become accredited registrars?
The current fee to become an accredited registrar is €10,000, so many of the smaller companies will not be attracted at this stage.
Although there has been a lot of debate about the importance of the EU TLD it is impossible for anybody to say confidently whether or not it will prove successful once the initial flurry of interest has died down
EDIT: As was to be expected the complete ban on resellers was not viable. In common with many other TLDs Eurid allows reselling as an “agent” of an accredited registrar:
See here for full details
Crazy people really! All they are doing is limiting access, which will limit sales. It could be a flash in the pan domain, meaning many companies will never even recoup the 10k initial fee, let alone all the ancilliary costs.
Steve
I know! It’s mad. €10,000 to get started is a lot of cash to hand over for a product with no track record. It would be a different matter if it was something with a guaranteed return, but look what happened with .info
They can’t get rid of the domains even if they give them away for free!!
Michele
I got a few spams from US based ops claiming to be .eu registrars already. Though I have serious reservations about .eu being a short term success. The high entry barrier is a common thing and there has not been an event like this since Network Solutions lost its position as sole .com/net/org registrar. The entry price then to become a registrar was even higher I think.
In numerical terms, .info is a disaster. It is a highly inflated gTLD and I would think that somewhere between 40% and 60% of .info are not genuine registrations.
For a small country, a 10K starting fee is ridiculous. It should have been linked to the size of the internet industry in each European country.