We at HEXONET are looking forward to attending the upcoming DOMAINfest Global 2011. In less than one month from now, over 600 domain investors, Internet marketing professionals and service providers from over 30 different countries will converge in Santa Monica to kick off the largest annual domaining conference. The event will be held at the world-class Fairmont Miramar Hotel. As usual, the agenda is filled with a number of sessions that feature the hottest trends and most important issues facing the domain industry. There is one in particular that we are really looking forward to. It is called “Opportunities in ccTLDs, IDNs and gTLDs.” The panelists for this session include some very well-respected individuals in the industry including Ken Hansen, Senior Director for Business Development at Neustar (operator of .US and .BIZ registries), Dr. Jorg Schweiger, CTO at DENICeG, the central registry for .de domains and Daniel Dryzek, CEO and Founder of ddfund.eu. The networking opportunities at DOMAINfest Global are outstanding as well. It is a chance for the HEXONET team to reconnect with industry colleagues and friends and to establish new business contacts. If you haven’t yet booked your conference pass, what are you waiting for? We look forward to seeing you there!

This week, we featured a blog posting on .CZ, the official country-code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) of the Czech Republic.  In the posting we mentioned one of Czech’s leading domainers, Jan Barta and his company, Elephant Orchestra.  Peter Misek, Jan’s colleague and head of the domain division at Elephant Orchestra, was kind enough to grant an interview with HEXONET. We would like to share with you his insights.

PETER MISEK: I would say you can attribute the growth in domain name registrations to three elements

1. The drastic reduction of the registration fees for the .cz tld. A few years ago a yearly domain registration would cost as much as 600 CZK whereas now it moves around 200 CZK depending on volume and the registrar.
2. The general spread of broadband coverage and thus the increasing need and motivation for an online presence by more and more companies, businesses and individuals both local and across the country. and
3. The high respect .cz gets over other tlds. Similarly to having seznam.cz before Google, .cz is perceived as a far more trustworthy, strong and a natural tld by the general public. Having a business only with a .com for example doesn’t make you look good in some people’s eyes. (Note: According to Alexa, Seznam.cz is the top site in the Czech Republic in terms of traffic)

HEXONET: How active is the domainer market in Czech Republic?

PETER MISEK: The domain market is lively relative to the size of the country. The most active platforms for selling domains here is daukce.cz or webtrh.cz but live auctions such as the ones during Domain Day are usually quite active too. You could say that the volume of domains sold is adequate to the size of the market, the average price of a domain sold isn’t usually very high compared to other markets such as Poland. However, a large value is assigned to the sale of already developed domains such as was shown by the sale of penize.cz (money.cz) or letenky.cz (flighttickets.cz) which both sold for just under 10 million CZK.

HEXONET: What are the challenges/obstacles for .CZ moving forward?

PETER MISEK: The biggest challenge is obviously the size of the market but that will improve and grow over the time which I believe will come naturally as the momentum is already there. The thing we are trying to do is to educate the public (individuals and business) about the value of a domain name itself, as a brand and as an asset. People here see great value in developed names on which a business is already run, but its hard to explain the value and potential of the “name” only.

HEXONET would like to thank Peter Misek for the feedback he provided. We look forward to meeting Peter and his team at the DOMAINfest conference next month in Prague.

	HEXONET will be attending DOMAINfest next month in Prague, Czech Republic.  Founded and hosted by DomainSponsor, the domain monetization division of Oversee.net, the DOMAINfest conference brings domain industry and Internet professionals together to learn, network, and do business.Before the upcoming DOMAINfest, HEXONET would like to take this perfect opportunity to feature the .CZ ccTLD, the official country-code Top-Level Domain for the Czech Republic.

Overview:

• The .CZ registry is operated by CZ.NIC
• Domain name registrations for .CZ continue their strong grow in 2010, with an average of 10,000 domains being registered each month.
  
• Total .CZ registered domains now total over 708,844.
• Domain names are evenly distributed between individual holders and corporate holders – 48% individual / 52% organizations
• CZ.NIC is one of the early adopters of DNSSEC. Domains administered by CZ.NIC allow the use of DNSSEC for securing DNS records.
• Outside of the Czech Republic, Germans registrants register more .CZ domains than any other country (Source: http://www.nic.cz/page/752/cz.nic-issues-domain-report/)
• In 2007, CZ.NIC introduced its new in-house created registry system called FRED.
  
• • The FRED (Free Registry for ENUM and Domains) central registry software was open-sourced with built in support for smaller registries.
  • Smaller and starting registries can operate their domain in a system designed for the Czech domain which, thanks to its parameters and capacity, is capable of handling much higher volumes of domain names than currently registered in the ccTLD.
  • In 2009 the FRED system was deployed to operate the Tanzanian national domain (.tz). Following the launch of FRED in Angola in 2008, this system now runs domain administration in two African countries. (source: CZ.NIC)
  • Registrars are very pleased with FRED as it has sped up and simplified the registration process significantly.

Trends & Future Outlook:

• The domainer market in the Czech Republic is very active. In fact, the Czech Association of Domain Owners  (CADD) highly promotes public awareness of domain names and the buying and selling and use of domain names in business. CADD also supports and defends the interest of its members in their member’s respective areas of business or professional sector.
• CADD also organizes the annual DomainDay event.   http://www.domainday.cz/
• Leading Czech domainer, Jan Barta, has just been nominated as a potential Domainers of the Year candidate. Jan is a domain heavyweight in the Czech Republic, who has also been a successful serial entrepreneur with companies like Crazy Tomato (mobile content distribution and marketing for corporations like T-Mobile, O2, Red Bull, KFC, Budweiser, and Coca-Cola) and Elephant Orchestra (monetizing direct navigation search traffic).

CZ at a Glance:

• Available Domains: .cz
• Pricing:  View pricing
• Requirements: Company registration number (any country), DOB of administrative contact, and VAT (if applicable).
• Registry: CZ.NIC
• Registration Period: 1-10 yrs
• IDN capable: No