Maybe if AUDA wasn't charging $5 a registration (money which is wasted and/or stockpiled) and the registry $12 you'd have more of a margin?
Okay, let's do a fair comparison.
- .com wholesale price is $8.03USD per year, of which $7.85 goes to the registry operator (Verisign) and $0.18 goes to ICANN. When converted to Australian dollars at current market rates (excluding bank currency conversion fees and GST) it comes to $10.28AUD ex GST.
- .com.au wholesale price is $8.75AUD ex GST per year, of which $7.00 goes to the registry operator (AusRegistry/Neustar) and $1.75 goes to auDA.
It's immediately clear that on the whole .au domain names are cheaper than their gTLD cousins, but domainers like yourself would argue that they are far less valuable on scale and you would be right simply because the .au aftermarket is minuscule in comparison.
But what I don't understand from your statement is why you think that auDA and AusRegistry are charging too much? As I have shown, when accurately and fairly compared .au is already cheaper, and if you were to break down the costs of operating a registry in Australia, factoring in all costs such as data centre space, power, bandwidth, hardware, wages and taxes in comparison to those run overseas, you might be surprised to find that it's not quite as profitable an exercise as it may appear.
Do I think that auDA should take 10 times that of ICANN? Once again, comparing the volume of domains that ICANN take their 18 cents from is way more than 10 times that of auDA, but something that most people agree with is that we all respect the governance of the .au name space (to a certain degree) to ensure that integrity has remained and formed a trusted brand that Australians recognise. Doing that costs money and again I quote that wages, taxes, etc, are all far more than most other parts of the world.
I realise that this is the long way about answering your question so my short answer is simply "no", because even if auDA and AusRegistry were charging less you would still have overseas-based registrars who unfairly avoid GST charging far less for what is essentially the same product and we would be forced to compete because as has been proven in this market with the rise of registrars like Crazy Domains is that people look at price first and quality of service second.
Do you think .au will solve your problems? You'll be making 75 cents on those aswell whilst AUDA and the registry grab all the money.
Will direct registrations solve my problems? Absolutely not.
But nobody is solving a problem when they are using forums like this to unmistakably advertise the fact that they would prefer to give their money to registrars like Uniregistry who deliver precisely ZIPPO back to our economy simply because they are cheaper and avoid GST, and in doing so you are no more the answer then anybody else because if direct registrations go ahead you will simply be funneling even more of that money overseas!
Fact check time. More people in Australia care about outsourced customer service than those who care about .au direct registrations.
So in my view, worrying about what auDA and AusRegistry do with the money is second to supporting the registrars who do the real work to bring it in to them - and more importantly, those registrars who actually use that revenue to support the local economy through jobs and taxes.
Kind Regards,
Cheyne Jonstone
Executive Chairman
VentraIP Australia - Synergy Wholesale - Zuver Hosting & Domains
