Cyber estate prices hit rock bottom
Thursday, 24 April 2008, 01:40 IST
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Mumbai: Though India's real estate prices have skyrocketed over the last 3-4 years, the country is witnessing the opposite trend in cyberspace, where prices of India (.in) domain names has fallen from a nominal Rs 500 in 2007 to Rs 100 in March 2008, reported Business Standard. However, the .in registrations on the Internet have grown almost 70 fold over the last four years - from 6,500 in 2004 to 230,000 in 2007. Showing no letup in the registration rate, the period from October 2007 to March 2008 saw an almost doubling of the registration to 440,000, thanks to the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) reducing its wholesale prices to Rs 100. The rates have normalized since April 1. The numbers may look small when compared with .com, which accounts for over 80 percent of the world?s domain name registrations. However, an NIXI official maintained that he expects around 10,000 .in domain registrations every month. The .in domain names make a lot of sense since 60 to 70 percent of Internet traffic is domestically generated. In the absence of an exchange like NIXI at the gateway, the traffic goes over the gateway to exchanges in the U.S. or elsewhere and then gets redirected to India. It consumes international bandwidth and results in delays. Moreover, with the .in domain initiative (servers in India), India based organizations can enhance their web identity and digital brands. It is also expected to help Internet service providers (ISPs) cut international bandwidth costs. Till 2006, while India rated 63 percent in the usage of .in domain names, while 37 percent were registered outside the country. Over 150 countries are represented by .in domain owners. The most popular ones are India, the U.S. and Germany, accounting for over 81 per cent registrations, followed by the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Switzerland, Italy, and China. The current composition is being updated by NIXI and the results should be out by the second half of this calendar year. NIXI took the initiative to set up state-of-the art hardware and software, and re-launched the '.in' registry in 2004. It is not an ISP, but enters into agreements with ISPs and has around 46 accredited registrars (licensed to issue domain name registrations). Of these, 32 are Indian registrars who resell domain names bought from NIXI at wholesale prices. Mumbai based Directi and Delhi-based Net4 India control 70 percent of the domain names business between them. Net4, for instance, hosts around 75,000 websites.
Source: IANS
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