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dotBERLIN comments on the 2nd Draft Applicant Guidebook

  • To: <2gtld-guide@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Subject: dotBERLIN comments on the 2nd Draft Applicant Guidebook
  • From: "Dirk Krischenowski | dotBERLIN" <krischenowski@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:18:37 +0100

We participated and contributed in the new gTLD process from the very
beginning in 2005 and many of our ideas and previous comments were
incorporated in the current version of the Applicant Guidebook. For the 2nd
draft we again have some comments and change requests by which we are aiming
to get a fair treatment on our way to acquire an own identity for the Berlin
community on the Internet. 

Please reduce the Evaluation Fees and Annual Fees!
--------------------------------------------------
The economic perspective of the .berlin top-level domain is likely
comparable to a well developed ccTLD which has a similar sized community. By
this the .berlin domain registrations could be forecasted to about 100,000
domains; this is comparable to Ireland (122,000 .ie domains) or Latvia with
less than 100,000 domains.

The .berlin TLD will offer choice and diversity to the German Internet
community and will create competition to Germany's ccTLD .de (currently
12.5M domains at an end user market price of US$ 5), operated by DENIC.

Having spent over US$ 2,000,000 already from the beginning of the New gTLD
process in 2005 and obliged to pay additional US$ 185,000 evaluation fees
and at least US$ 25,000 annual fees to ICANN, the upfront economic burden on
the expected number of 100,000 .berlin domains is at least US$ 22 per
domain! By this fact any choice, diversity and competition is stopped even
before the birth of .berlin.

Together with our comments made on the 1st Draft Applicant Guidebook (e.g.
smooth application processing, German and European competition laws) we call
ICANN to reduce the application fees for cityTLDs to not more that US$
50,000 and the annual fees to not more than US$ 10,000 minimum annual fees.

Please tell the World a reliable New gTLD Timeline!
---------------------------------------------------
We appreciate the work ICANN staff did so far, especially Kurt Pritz, Karla
Valente and Karen Lentz made tremendous efforts to implement the guidelines,
take care of all the comments so far and drive the implementation of the New
gTLD Process to an successful launch. Nevertheless it is a scandal that
ICANN did not publish any reliable timeline at this time. A reliable
timeframe is relevant for all parties affected, from back-end provides,
registrars, to the distinct community for the TLD, and the TLD applicant
itself. Therefore we urge ICANN to catch up on this as soon as possible.

Best regards,

Dirk Krischenowski
Founder and CEO
_______________________
dotBERLIN GmbH & Co. KG
Akazienstrasse 2
10823 Berlin
Germany
Tel +49 30 49782354
Fax +49 30 49782356
Mobile +49 173 2339156
E-Mail krischenowski@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Skype "krischenowski"
Web www.dotberlin.com


Attachment: Comment_dotBERLIN_DAG2.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document



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