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What’s happening with co.za hosting in South Africa

I discovered on the 18th January 2013 that we are due for a 50% increase in yearly domain fees for South African domains from R50 per year to R75.

While I can only see cost reductions in and around the costs of maintaining a domain registrar. i.e. servers – more power for less cost each year, storage increases and reduces in cost constantly and bandwidth costs which are dropping constantly, all domains registered already pay every year – why therefore are we getting a proposed 50% increase in yearly registration fees?

Who controls this ‘monopoly’ by the way and how do they get away with extortion and fraud. I’m calling it extortion because I have no choice but to pay as there are no competitors to switch to and I call it fraud because I can’t as yet see how they justify the cost increase other than greed and profits on their part. How do they ‘add value’ IP’s are free i.e. a string of numbers but ‘doled’ out as if they have ‘real’ value and cost.

There are currently 866,823 domains registered at R50 each or R35 in terms of the newer sub-registrars equates to R43 million yearly for doing what.

https://www.registry.net.za/domain_stats.php?gen=1&contentid=104

Domain Costing History

1999 December – R150 initial, R50 yearly

Looks like yearly renewals for domains only started costing as recently as December 1999

http://co.za/news/dec99/renewals.html

2002 September – R100 initial, R50 yearly

http://co.za/news/2002/sep-price-decrease.shtml

2005 October – R0 initial, R50.00 yearly

The initial registration fee was dropped

http://co.za/news/2005/nov-price-decrease.shtml

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