[governance] Re: ccTLDs and developing countries

[Norbert Bollow]

Kwasi Boakye-Akyeampong <kboakye1 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Well, I'm trying to understand what ccTLD is about and why we should take
> the management of the local ccTLD more seriously.

Here's some ideas on what kind of problems a ccTLD might help
solve or at least reduce:

- If your country's network connection to where the nameservers of
  the gTLDs are is very expensive or unreliable or has high latency
  or high packet loss, use of a ccTLD with nameservers within your
  country may be advantageous for technical reasons.

- The same applies if within the country there are some long-distance
  connnections with one of more of these characteristics, separating
  from each other regions which within themselves have better
  connections.  Putting nameservers for your ccTLD into each of
  these regions (I'd suggest in such a situation to publish two
  nameserver IPs and use anycast for both, putting a copy of each in
  each of these regions, plus another copy of each in a well-connected
  data center in the US) would in such a situation make DNS resolution
  for your ccTLD work quickly and reliably.

- Depending on funding, it may be possible to make ccTLD registration
  for local businesses available at prices which are more easily
  affordable for local SMEs than the prices of gTLDs.

- If the gTLD dispute resolution process is a problem for SMEs in your
  country, that's a problem which could be avoided by using the
  country's ccTLD if for that there are established dispute resolution
  procedures which don't create problems for local SMEs.

- If your country's ccTLD is not as well-established as some other
  country's, that in itself could emotionally influence people in your
  country to make less good use of the opportunities of the internet.

I think you really need to go there and talk with those who would, in
theory at least, benefit from using the internet more, and learn
what's holding them back.  I would suggest that putting significant
emphasis on ccTLD development makes economic sense only if such
interviews reveal significant hinderances of one of the types that can
be addressed by means of the ccTLD.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                    http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG  http://SIUG.ch
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