The webinar on administrative and marketing issues of the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR) was held on February 15. "Why should you invest in registrar relationships?". Participants, representing country code domains in Europe, shared their experience of interaction with registrars.
Svetlana Lobanova, project manager of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, made a presentation at the webinar. She described how the Center cooperates with registrars in the development of documents related to the registration of domain names in the .RU and .РФ zones.
Svetlana also noted that the Committee of Registrars, which is an advisory body, has been working at the Coordination Center since 2004. The Committee today includes representatives of 49 accredited registrars, and 99 registrars are accredited in .RU and .РФ in total.
“Every time we feel that the current domain name registration procedures need to be updated, we discuss this with the registrars. If we understand that it is necessary to make changes to the Domain Name Registration Rules or to some other regulatory documents, we start the process of developing regulatory documents, organizing a working group, and inviting volunteers from among the registrars, as well as representatives of the Technical Center Internet to join it,” noted Svetlana Lobanova. The working group is active until new or updated document is approved.
Svetlana also said about the special Regulation for the development, approval, and implementation of regulatory documents, that guided the Coordination Center and registrars for many years during such work. The document is regularly updated in light of the current situation. The Regulation describes in detail all the steps for the development of regulatory documents: from the definition of a problem to the approval of a new document by the founders of the Coordination Center. Members of the working group from among the registrars play an important role in this process.
“As a result, we benefit from cooperation with registrars. They feel involved in the process of creating regulatory documents for TLD .RU/.РФ and see that their opinion is taken into account. And since registrars interact with users directly and know their needs well, we can use their experience and make the right decisions on various issues. Such decisions are taken into account in the process of developing documents. As a result, we see that the overwhelming majority of our registrars and domain name administrators are satisfied with the quality of regulatory documents” she said.
Svetlana also explained how the document development process has changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The representative of the Internetstiftelsen registry (Sweden) Anna Agné presented the experience of launching automatic renewal for ccTLDs .SE and .NU and the involvement of registrars in this process.
Representative of the .UK Nominet registry (UK) Philip Coterill shared his experience of interaction between the registry and registrars and described how the interaction tools have changed with the COVID-19 pandemic: fewer face-to-face meetings, more events online. He also shared plans for interaction with registrars in 2022.
In parallel with the presentation, there was a survey on the relationship between registries and registrars, as well as events held jointly with registrars. All participants emphasized the importance of investing in registrar relationships, as well as the need to collaborate with registrars on a wide range of issues related to domain name registration.
