Marc, Thank you for your letter. We are talking to VeriSign later this week about IDNs and I will be addressing the issues and proposal you listed.
I do agree a cheaper price would increase new registrations and the renewal rate for everyone, but price break by the Registry might be difficult to obtain, but maybe not impossible if positioned as a time-limited promotion. Everyone should feel free to email me directly or Discuss on the issues you would like to see addressed with VeriSign's IDNs. I to see a big opportunity in IDNs and want to ensure that we all go down the correct path on this. Regards, Tom Katsiroubas TLDs Product Manager Tucows Inc. - [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Marc Schneiders Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 4:31 PM Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: IDN: Draft letter to Verisign [No suggestions as to improvement of the interpunction and use of Capitals at this stage, please. Just textual.] --- D R A F T --- Hello VeriSign! We've noticed a lot of people are worried about their IDNs. They ask themselves what they are paying for? We know about the new plugin, I-Nav, and must say it does work fine. But that doesn't satisfy most of our customers. One says he runs FreeBSD and the plugin doesn't work on that or Linux, or even Solaris and True64. Another mentions email. A third has a Mac. And so on and so forth. Now you know as well as we do, or even better, that IDNs is really a gorgeous market, if they fly. And since the new .ORG does no longer offer them, we cannot buy them anywhere else than with you, in .COM and .NET. And after 2005, when .NET will be open for rebid and another registry could get it, we might be able to buy only .COM IDNs. Now don't tell us that you are waiting until then to explore this market to avoid orphaned IDNs in .NET as we now have them already in .ORG? There must really be a big jump soon, dear VeriSign. Else some other party may jump. Into this market we mean. ccTLDs could in co-operation, or on their own, get ideas. It is not that they are patented, IDNs, are they? So we would like to kill two flies in one smash: 1. Make those who renew their IDN feel that they got value for their money. 2. Sell more IDNs. We do know you have tried a few things. The new plug in, and changing the DNS for answers to queries that contain characters higher than ASCII 127. Not sure that was clever. (Never make ICANN _and_ the IETF angry about the same thing. Then you lose.). Anyway, even that would not amount to a true big jump for IDNs. Email still doesn't work with this, does it? There is nobody here who has as much as an MCSE but several insist anyway that this DNS subversion might send email to servers that shouldn't get it. So it is getting worse. Now before the lament comes that it is all the fault of others who block progress with IDNs and not you: We pass on that. We say we believe you for now. We come back to that perhaps later. It is not important now. What is important, especially since we work through RESELLERS, is that the customer seller relation improves in permanence. In plain Dutch: Long term contracts. Yes, lock them in. Or for marketing purposes say that the customers and we (you too) commit ourselves to the product, and therefore to each other. Concrete: IDNs must be renewed but for now we do it for two years. Yes, not one, but two. We suggest that you charge us, Tucows, $6.01 per two year renewal. Since we would like to announce this in time for all of us to make special offers to VLIBs (Valentine Late Impulsive Buyers), we would like to hear your approval of our proposal February 6 latest. Thank you! Tucows and its resellers
