I've decided to take on an ambituous goal to interview all of the world's ccTLD registries. Some of them will take years before I can get them to agree and others will take years before they are even operational like some African nations. A man has to have a mission though and the project intrigues me.

This first interview is with Victor Abboud of NIC.EC the Ecuadorian ccTLD. While their market share is small they are doing a promotion for domainers that ends in a few days so the time to publish this is now.

After friendly chats with Victor over the phone and via email I feel that they are a domainer friendly registry so I want to help them get more exposure. After all, any friend of domainers is a friend of mine.

A bit about Ecuador first. I was there last summer when I visited the Galapagos Islands with my family. I really liked the country and the people very much.

According to Wikipedia Ecuador has around 15 million people. Most of them live either in Quito (the capital) or Guayaquil the financial center. NIC.EC is in Guayaquil.

The official language is, of course, Spanish.

Now onto the interview. As this is my first one, forgive me if I have missed important questions.

RL - Please tell us your official title with  NIC.EC

Mr Abboud - General Manager   of NIC.EC , Domain Registry of Ecuador .

RL - How many .ec names are currently  registered?

Mr Abboud - There are almost 20,000 domain names under .ec .

RL - I see that www.nic.ec is also in English. That’s  very handy for many of us. Can you tell me if email and telephone support is  also available in English?

Mr Abboud - NIC.EC website is in Spanish and  has a full version in English  , as well as all reminder and  confirmation emails. We have customer support by email and telephone also in  English .

RL - I see that you have a special running until the 20th  of June. Can you tell my audience all about it?

Mr Abboud - During the last years we have had a promotion of discounted  fees , and this year from June 10 to the 20th, the promotion  is for new domains for US$10 for 1 year , $20 for 2 years and $30 for 3  years, which is a great opportunity to register domain names . Many domain  holders had their names under .com.ec but not directly under .ec . Some  prefer one or the other , some prefer both , in any case is a good moment to  register both options as well as others as .info.ec and .net.ec .

RL - Are there any restrictions for foreigners that want  to own .ec names?

Mr Abboud - Registrations under .ec , .com.ec  , .net.ec , .info.ec are open to all with no local presence required ,  however domains under .edu.ec , org.ec and .gov.ec are only for Ecuadorians.

RL - What about transfers? Is there paperwork required  for transfers or can people simply push a name to another account?

Mr Abboud - For domain transfer from one Registrant to another there is some paperwork  in terms of signing a form and sending some documents. Also there is a  transfer fee . This process is not through the website but is not time  consuming if done properly.

RL - It  appears that nic.ec is both the registry and registrar for .ec domains. Do  you have any plans for opening up and supplying volume discounts for other  registrars?

Mr Abboud - Many Registrars register .ec  domains for their customers but also many Registrants register directly  through NIC.EC . We are working on implementing a Registrar accreditation  process for them to have a more efficient process on .ec registration as  well as fees according to the volume they manage. This effort is to promote  the use of .ec domains and for Registrants to have several options of .ec  registration with value added services

RL - Do  you offer tasting or have plans to offer tasting?

Mr Abboud - No domain tasting in .ec because though one may register a  domain name, activation is upon payment.

RL - What do you do with expired domains? Do you publish  a list anywhere of .ec names that are expiring or have expired?

Mr Abboud - We  do all efforts to make domain holders aware that their domain is  expiring and that may suffer suspension of services and finally its deletion  . Once the grace period ends after many processes and alerts, the domain is  deleted and no list is published and it is then available for registration .

Thank you Victor for taking the time to help me on this project. Good luck with your promotion and see you at an ICANN meeting or hopefully a Targeted TRAFFIC show.