racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Here’s another post in my series of articles on the .PH domain namespace. Those of you who are aware that I used to work for the .PH registry (nice people, btw) might be wondering why the heck I’m writing about .PH, and whether I’ll be sharing some juicy insider information on the issues the ccTLD had been, and is still currently, involved in. Well, I’m still not sure about the extent of my knowledge of the .PH issues, but from what I know, things are not likely to take a drastic turn in the near future. I mean this with reference to how .PH is run and managed in light of the Philippine government’s attempts to wrest control from the private sector.

The ccTLD (country top-level domains, like .PH) namespace isn’t exactly competitive, given the rock-bottom prices of generic TLDs such as .com, .net, and .org (or “CNO”). A .PH domain would cost about 500% to 1000% more than your generic .com or .net domain. So the ccTLDs usually lose out to the CNOs, in terms of market share. And the registrars and registries usually lose the business to GTLD registrars and registries.

That’s unless your domain spells out something cute or novel, such as Tuvalu’s .TV (for television) Micronesia’s .FM, Armenia’s .AM (for FM and AM radio, respectively), which media companies are snapping up left and right, or if your namespace can be used to spell words, such as del.icio.us, with the .US namespace (you can also have mal.icio.us, and other interesting names).

At around the turn of the century, the administrators of .PH (my former employer) marketed the idea of .PH being the domain for “Phone,” in a now-defunct marketing scheme called dotPHone. It’s an interesting play on words, actually. The registry’s name is dotPH, and the product was supposed to be dotPHone—you can dissect that into dotPH, PHone, PH one, Dot Phone, and probably other permutations. However, the idea didn’t fly for some reason, and perhaps one is the Philippine government’s (some bureaus in particular) did not seem to be too comfortable with offering .PH domains to non-Filipinos. Or maybe, the idea of a domain for phones just didn’t catch on too well with the telephone-using public (and that was the time of the dot-com boom, pre-bubble, and “m-commerce” was a concept yet to be developed).

Anyway, I digress.

I think it would be a great idea to start banking on popularizing com.ph or even .ph domains among the Philippine blogging community. I mean, majority of Pinoy bloggers are likely on blogspot.com, or even friendster.com. A small minority is on i.PH—a .PH domain, but not necessarily a “free” domain (as in free speech, not as in free beer), since it’s attached to a hosted blogging solution. I’m thinking of something along the lines of Manolo’s quezon.ph. Won’t you readers think a yourname.com.ph blog domain would be cool? And what if transfer were to be painless and hassle-free?

Of course this comes with cost considerations, but I think if the price is right (especially if it’s free or near-free), then Filipino bloggers would catch on to the idea well.

Any takes on this idea?