[Sydney, AUSTRALIA] Launching its wholesale and retail domain name business today,
Melbourne-based telco Primus said it would halve the price of .com.au domain
names if competition was introduced in the market.
“We think it’s deplorable that the monopoly can go on,” said John Dowell, general manager
eCommerce and online services. “All we’re asking auDA
[Australia’s domain name administration body] to do is get their act
together. We don’t like the monopoly, we don’t understand the monopoly, and
we don’t see why this country needs one.”
Dowell compared the Australian market to Canada’s, saying that country had
benefited from competition in assigning local domain names. He said Primus
would be targeting the SME market both overseas and in Australia, offering
top level domains in multiple character sets.
Primus’ domain registrar business, Planet Domain, will host the service for
would-be resellers, including other ISPs, on a commission-based model. There
will be no setup fees and resellers can customize the service with their own
prices and branding.
Primus did not submit an application to ICANN to register new top level
domains, but said it was keen to sell .aero, .info, .coop .pro and others,
including .biz, to which Melbourne IT recently won the right of registration
as part of its JVTeam venture with Neustar.