Subject: Re: [provreg] Why must there be one solution? was Re: Lists and EPP

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:08:51 -0400

Ed,

At the Paris ICANN meeting I asked the Registrar Constituency members
present which would be doing new gTLDs -- as registrars.

No hands were raised.

At that point the design space was still "6+60", with a growing, but
commercially negligible 3166 auxilliary space of "N+N0", where N was
a small, but growing two digit integer, the number of epp-speaking
ccTLDs, and 10xN was a handwave at the number of counter-party
registrars.

Something's changed.

The Vertial Integration Botch (tm) now means that we've 600+600 as
a design space. 600 registries (legacy ex-RRP-speakers, 2001+2004
EPP-speakers, a "bigger N" number of 3166 registries, and ICANN's
500 (or whatever) of 201x registries, AND the same 60 registrars
(ignoring the 600+ shell registrars that exist only for the 3pm
race), the same "+N0" registrars pursuing local geo markets, AND
each registry-as-a-registrar.

I think its a nightmare, but each registry-as-registrar is just as
rational as VGRS in pursuing its own effective monopoly in total
indifference to the chaos around it. At least until it fails.
 
I suggest, that for straight registrars, that with the rate of
transition to delegation of three-per-day, that agility matters more
than anything, unless registrars are deliberate "market trailers",
and only moving on the additions (if any) to the CNOBI sweet spot
of volume and lack of variation in business logical fundamentals.

Perhaps PAF will get his One True Thing-a-Majig, or the CNOBI sweet
spot will either not enlarge with diversity, or diverge over time,
as James suggests.

I just don't expect uniformity. I do however expect clustering
along policy lines, and along platform independent lines, as well
as along platform-captured lines.

Eric