On 13/01/2026 05:40, Maureen Hilyard wrote:
Dear John
For me this information is really valuable to start conversations with our SIDS communities about how much they value their cctld and where they see gtlds featuring in their futures.
It puts the ccTLDs and gTLDs in a different light, Maureen, the problem for the SIDS is infrastructure, market size and conditioning. For a small ccTLD, the gTLDs will always occupy most of the market until the ccTLD gains a critical mass. It cannot do that without being available to register on various registrars and resellers popular in the country. People have almost been conditioned to go for the easy option and the way that a gTLD domain name can be registered and live in minutes makes it far more attractive than a domain name in a one in a ccTLD that can take a day or more befpre the domain name goes live. Some of the SIDS ccTLD managers may have been unlucky to be appointed because nobody else wanted the job. There may also be the well intentioned academics who approach running a ccTLD as a kind of Civil Society issue rather than as a business one. The gTLD registries are in business (mostly) and they are focused primarily on selling domain names. There is also a difference in perception and that gets back to the stats. Without the stats, a SIDS ccTLD may appear to be competing with a gTLD with over 158 million registrations (.COM). Consdered like that, a ccTLD hasn't much of a chance. The reality is that a ccTLD is competing with the domnant gTLD in its market for the early phase of the market's deelopment and it is only competing with the numbers of locally registred gTLDs. The problem with that is that the country breakdowns of registrations are rarely published by the gTLD registries. The GDPR fiasco has made it much more difficult to measure these figures. WHOIS privacy and dubious though syntactically correct WHOIS data intentionally makes it more difficult. Thus large gTLDs with millions of registrations may look to be unbeatable. The reality is that they are not because every gTLD has its own geography. It is up to the ccTLD to establish itself in its market. The ccTLD isn't competing with the gTLDs. It is only competing with the numbers of those gTLDs registered in their market. It is very different for a gTLD. If it has a global market rather than a geographical or linguistic one, it is competing against all other gTLDs and ccTLDs. Marketing for a ccTLD has a depth problem whereas the marketing for a gTLD has a width problem. The ccTLD market is geographically concentrated (depth). A gTLD market is often more global. The marketing for a ccTLD can be concentrated. The marketing for a gTLD is much more complicated because it often involves many country level markets. That is a lot more expensive than marketing a ccTLD so the gTLD registries often rely on the registrars and resellers to do the hard work.
SIDS performance wrt their cctlds is quite pitiful really, but as we found when .au called meeting of those Pacific managers who were attending the APNIC meeting in Wellington, last year. They have no idea about how to manage the cctld they have been given charge of, nor how to cope with the increasing security issues etc. Even though many belong to regional NOGs, Im sure that they get upskilled on the technical side of their ISP management but as for customer needs and service for websites, registrants are left on their own, because our small ISP managers themselves are not coping and aren't offering the security services new website owners need to make their services trustworthy. Its a never ending cycle.
The SIDS ccTLD managers were in much the same position as some of the gTLD applicants in the 2012 round who were relying on snakeoil predictions from people who hadn't a clue about what it takes to establish and grow a TLD. The academically sound economic study sponsored by ICANN had certain problems with the reality of the Internet. It missed the importance of redirects in a domain name market. Because of the way that a domain name's brand works, a registrant will maintain its previous domain name and redirect to its new domain name. This is not strictly product substitution because, after the .COM and .NET pair, the most common registrations pair is a .COM and the equivalent .ccTLD. A new registrant may register their .ccTLD and the equivalent .COM. There is another metric that can indicate the success of a ccTLD and that's how unique the registrations are in that a percentage of the registrations will have no equivalent in other TLDs. As a ccTLD becomes more successful in its market, the number of people only registering in that ccTLD increases. They don't need to register a .COM or other gTLD. There is a measurable point in a country level market where a ccTLD begins to dominate its market. That is when the web redirects between ccTLD and gTLD websites change from being majority ccTLD to gTLD websites to being majority gTLD to ccTLD. The real danger for a ccTLD is that it could end up a Potemkin village with just government websites and usage. Some of the ISPs may not be the best choice to drive a ccTLD unless they can tie the domain names into mail services and web services. The SIDS ccTLDs are often at the same level as countries in Europe in the early 1990s. The local telcos and new ISPs dominated the domain name market then because it was difficult to register a domain name and hosting, connectivity and traffic was expensive. The ISPs are essential for the early phase of the market but the ccTLD (and gTLD) managers need to reach out to the web developers and existing resellers. Getting them onside is important. This is also where ICANN's 1990s registrar model can be used against gTLDs because the chances are that there will be no local ICANN accredited registrar. Even though domain names are commoditised, many businesses and people may want to buy locally. The local web developers and resellers are important links in that chain. Some tie-ins with large DIY website and e-commerce web hosting providers could also help make a ccTLD more popular with people who want to build their own website. The most important thing for a new TLD (ccTLD or gTLD) after basic awareness, is getting "shelf space" on registrars and resellers to make it easy for people to register and use the domain names. This is very different from the "Field of Dreams" fallacy that drove a lot of the 2012 round (if you build it, they will come). Successful ccTLDs build a community and get people identifying with it as being *their* TLD. That's probably the most difficult challenge for an TLD manager. They have to find a reason and a motivation for people to use the TLD.
But we have to start somewhere. Thank you for your valuable information.
Building a successful TLD is much harder than it looks. There are no overnight successes. Regards...jmcc -- ********************************************************** John McCormac * e-mail: jmcc@hosterstats.com MC2 * web: http://www.hosterstats.com/ 22 Viewmount * Domain Registrations Statistics Waterford * Domnomics - the business of domain names Ireland * https://amzn.to/2OPtEIO IE * Skype: hosterstats.com ********************************************************** -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com