AusRegistry wins $40 million monopoly .Au domain contract extension

Adrian Kinderis and Simon Delzoppo have done it again. In a deal that should earn their AusRegistry Group up to $40million in revenues over the next four years, Delzoppo and Kinderis have retained their monopoly hold on the master Australian domain names database.
Every time someone buys a 2 year license to an Au domain name at one of the 24 or 25 accredited Au registrars, (such as Melbourne IT, Intaserve, or NetRegistry’s Planet Domain), Kinderis and Delzoppo’s company will earn $14.

The registrars have no choice - AusRegistry is the only accredited wholesaler of au domain names.

Of course, $14 is slightly less than the boys get under their current contract with auDomain Administration Ltd.

But when you consider there are now more than 1.3 million Au domain names registered, and most are renewed every year or two, AusRegistry’s contract is very, very lucrative. Even better, the revenues are secure, and growing.

According to AusRegistry’s official end of month report for January of 2009, there are just over 1.1million com.au domain names currently registered, and just over 127,000 net.au domains.

At the same time last year, the com.au total was 880,000 names and 93,000 net.au names. So the Au registry is still growing very strongly, and indeed grew by more than 20% last year.

26,000 new com.au domain names were registered in January this year and just under 28,000 were renewed. So with AusRegistry getting around $15 for each of these 54,000 names, it earned more than $750,000.

On an annualized basis that works out to revenue of some $9million for com.au and net.au domain names.

Even so, AusRegistry didn’t have to face any competition to get its contract extension.

A ‘competition panel’ set up by auDA to look at the issue recommended that there should be no competition. Instead it recommended that auDA should renew the contact so long as it locked in a better deal.

According to the statement issued by auDA and AusRegistry, the new deal will see

extended Customer Support Hours for Registrars
funding towards Marketing and Market Research
a $0.25 donation to the auDA Foundation for every .com.au and .net.au domain renewal and new registration
the implementation of DNSSEC
commitment to yearly independent Security Audits
continued improvement and enhancement of the Registry Software
new pricing that sees a drop in AusRegistry's wholesale price to $14 (for a 2 year licence) for .com.au and .net.au domains and further drops as volumes increase.

Arguably, there was no point in going to tender because the cost of anyone setting up to replace AusRegistry would be so significant as to be unprofitable and not viable.

So AusRegistry is in the very happy situation of holding what might be considered a natural monopoly.

On the other hand, the same situation confronted AusRegistry when it first won the contract back in 2001 and displaced Melbourne IT.

So the decision to award AusRegistry a contract extension without a tender will undoubtedly have its critics.

AusRegistry is, nevertheless, very happy with the situation as Adrian Kinderis made clear.

"We are obviously extremely happy to have reached agreement to extend the licence. We are very proud of the role we have performed as Registry Operator since 2002 and look forward to continuing to show the world .au is at the forefront of Domain Name Registry technology."

On the back of the success of their AusRegistry business, Kinderis and Delzoppo have had a number of commercial successes internationally. Most recently the company won a contract to set up a domain name Registry operation in the United Arab Emirates. AusRegistry is now also the operator of a registry service for the Australian Government’s Office of the Energy Regulator. And the company has leveraged off its expertise to set up a wireless networking business known as My Link Wireless.

For more information go to
www.ausregistry.com.au
www.mywebname.com.au
www.auda.org.au
www.orer.gov.au
www.mylink.com.au