This is the fundamental difference between our viewpoints, I think.
You believe your competition is primarily other OpenSRS RSP's, and would
like to prevent OpenSRS from helping them compete with you, or maybe
enticing your customers to become RSP's.
I believe my competition, as far as DOMAIN REGISTRATION SERVICE goes, is
Network Solutions, Register.com, and the rest of the growing list of retail
registrars. It is only because of OpenSRS that I am able to compete on any
level with these companies, because I cannot justify ICANN accreditation
myself. But together with all the other OpenSRS RSP's, we are a viable
threat to their market share. So my view is, the more services OpenSRS
provides to me, the more services I can offer my customers (or the less
effort I have to expend to offer them). Part of my view is the acceptance
of the fact that others are getting the same wholesale services, but it is a
very big market. Part of your view must be that if OpenSRS withholds
additional services from their RSP's, it will somehow help you compete. I
do not accept this idea.
I freely discuss the benefits of being an OpenSRS RSP with my customers, and
encourage any of them with a substantial number of domains to consider that
option. My philosophy is that if I don't help my customers do what makes
sense for them, someone else will. If five bucks a year per domain makes a
difference to the customer, for whatever reason, real or imagined,
alternatives do abound and they WILL find out about them.
If OpenSRS chooses to forego adding features just so they can be less
attractive to potential low-capability RSP's, or to current retail customers
of existing RSP's, they will lose market share to registrars who do provide
these features. And although you may have a little less competition from
RSP's, you'll have a lot more from other registrars.
----- Original Message -----
From: "William X. Walsh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "David Iyoha" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "opensrs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, October 13, 2000 2:08 AM
Subject: Re[2]: New services: forwarding/DNS?
Hello David,
Thursday, October 12, 2000, 9:26:52 AM, you wrote:
> I think you are concentrating on the wrong competitors. I believe your
main
> competitors are the larger registrars who spend millions of dollars so
everyone
> knows about them. They already have all the cool extra services that
OpenSRS is
> going to add. So by OpenSRS adding them as part of their base product all
RSPs gain
> a competitive advantage (or simply catch up) with the larger registrars.
As someone who has been in this specific industry for years, I can
tell you that the larger registrars are NOT our competitors.
Your competition is right here. On this list. Each and every member.
--
Best regards,
William mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
