IEDR – comreg again

Someone brought up IEDR and Comreg on the IIU list yesterday.
I was chatting about this with a friend and he pointed me at Dave Wilson’s very incisive posting about it:
So the department of…
The reality is that the cost of IE domains to resellers is not as high as some people would like to make others believe.
Yes – co.uk domains cost less per unit
Yes – .nl domains are cheap too
However, and this is the point that most of these people miss, the way things are handled is completely different.
Nominet basically allows just about anybody to register a domain and a lot of their resellers (who hold an official nic handle) do sell domains at a “low” price. Try moving your domain away from them… The number of our clients who complain about being “hit” with STG£25 handling charges for retagging is quite worrying.
A lot of other CCTLDs weigh in at a very similar price to .ie
An example that Nick Hilliard cited was .es He didn’t mention anything about the rules or regulations, then again I shouldn’t be surprised, as most people focus entirely on the price.
So let’s look at that.
.cz – Czech Republic, now part of the EU. Rules / restrictions – hardly any but the language barrier may prove awkward. Cost of domain registration (excluding time involved) approx €50 + VAT (They are still coming into line with EU fiscal policy for intra-EU transactions)
.ie – Republic of Ireland. Rules/restrictions – quite a few, but registration is possible in most cases.
Cost of domain registration (excluding time involved and any extra discounts etc.,) €45 ex-VAT
.fr – France. Rules/restrictions – up until July of this year registration was restricted to French companies only. Cost approx €40, depending on reseller.
What about the legal aspects of it all? Or, dare I mention, the technical aspects?
.de – requires nameservers on 2 separate subnets and admin-c with address in Germany
.it – can require 2 MX records.
CNOBI – little or no technical knowledge required. ICANN rules “require” correct contact information, but in reality you could register a domain to Mickey Mouse and use any address or telephone number you wanted. Technical stuff?? They don’t even care whether the domain has an SOA.
The IEDR has brought down the wholesale price of IE domains and the rules, regulations and processes are in constant review.
Would Comreg be able to do a better job? I doubt it.
Will people stop whining about the price? I doubt that also.
When you consider that you use a domain name as an integral part of your business’ identity surely it is worth the price of one night out?