Interview with Sabine Dolderer, CEO of DENIC - Germany’s .de ccTLD

Today’s interview is with Sabine Dolderer, the CEO of DENIC which runs Germany’s .de ccTLD.

Most of my readers are well aware that Germany’s extension crushes other ccTLDs in aftermarket sales.

.de names are also the most widely registered ccTLD. .cn names have had a nice run in the last year and might even have more current registrations but they are widely expected to drop in numbers when the renewals come up.

Germany, the 3rd largest economic force in the world behind only The United States and Japan, has over 80 million citizens.

The country has always held a special place in my heart, largely because it just feels more comfortable as an American. Germans show up on time to meetings, eat meat and potatoes and love the Internet. My kind of place!

I’m especially fond of Berlin where the pace of development and business rivals New York City in excitement. This isn’t about me though. It’s about Sabine and the .de ccTLD. Let’s get to it:

RL - Can you please give my readers some background on DENIC? When and how was it formed? How has it changed since then?

Sabine Dolderer - DENIC is the manager of the German top level domain .de. DENIC is a not-for-profit entity conceived and dedicated to serve the interests of its members as well as the German Internet Community.

DENIC in it’s current form as a cooperative was founded in December 1996 as a membership organization by 36 German ISP’s. It was the successor of a loose cooperation of these ISP’s called IV-DENIC (Interessensverbund DENIC) which was established in 1993.

DENIC has now over 15 years of proven, demonstrable experience both operating and growing what has become the one of the largest TLD in the world. DENIC has proven in the .de space an untarnished 100% service delivery record.

Its exceptional technical competence, has gained DENIC great trust and an excellent reputation, not only in Germany but also internationally. With its now more than 250 members, it is strongly involved with the German Internet Community and thus guarantees that it will directly represent the Community’s interests on the national and on the international level.

The story of domain administration in Germany – and hence the story of DENIC – is a story of success. Since the Cooperative was founded in 1996, nearly 13 million domains have been registered, and a stable and fail-proof infrastructure has been set up. Moreover, following a trial phase of some years, DENIC transferred ENUM to production at the beginning of 2006.

DENIC operates and shapes its business environment in close cooperation with its members. In all its efforts it is driven by the ambition to provide an excellent operation its users, to advance the interests of the member and to ensure existing and new foundations for its business. It thus wants to create added value for its members and the German Internet Community.

RL - What is your official title within denic?

Sabine Dolderer - I am the CEO of DENIC and one of the two full-time members of DENIC’s Executive Board. The other full-time member is our CTO Dr. Jörg Schweiger

RL - How many .de names are currently registered?

Sabine Dolderer - 12.865.345 .de-domains are registered. (7 July 2009)

RL - Impressive. During the Targeted TRAFFIC ccTLDs show in Amsterdam this year I asked you a question that we both found fascinating. I had asked you what percentage of .de names contained hyphens/dashes. Can you share with my readers the answer?

Sabine Dolderer - 6.977.259 .de-domains contain a hyphen/dash. (7. July 2009)

RL - It is my understanding that non-German companies and individuals can register .de names but they must appoint a German or someone in Germany to be the administrative contact. Can you share the reasoning behind this policy?

Sabine Dolderer - This rule is directly copied from a similar rule from the German trademark law. The reason is that if trademark or other problems arise a point of contact in Germany exists where third parties – which also are very often in Germany - can go to.

RL - As you surely know, there is a vibrant and active aftermarket for .de names. An official position on the matter would be great but if nothing else, can we have your personal feelings as to the value of premium .de names? Are you happy or proud when you see high-value sales in the press?

Sabine Dolderer - We have seen an active and vital secondary market in Germany since early 2001 and some companies who started their business in Germany are now well-known in that market and good partners to us. As a registry we profit from an active aftermarket as stimulates also the primary registrations and therefore the growth of .de itself.

RL - I’m aware that as a central registry of very sought after names you are fighting a constant battle against drop catchers and automated scripts that hammer your systems relentlessly. I feel for you and respect your position. When we met in Mexico you mentioned various tactics you take to deter these folks and protect the integrity of your systems. Care to share any of that information with us here?

Sabine Dolderer - DENIC’s position to the market and the different player is neutral and our aim is to serve the community as a whole. While we acknowledge that different users of our services have different needs and often a legitimate interest to use our service in different ways we also see some power user - as you mention - who dominate with their usage scenarios a significant part of our services. To protect and maintain the service for “normal” usage scenarios our aim is to find a balance between the different needs. To address the needs of our power user we are currently working on a new service to provide them with extra or additional service through registrars. As we are currently still in the evaluation phase the modalities are not yet set, but we work in close cooperation with our members to find attractive models which benefit the different needs of our users.

RL - Germany, the 3rd largest economic force in the world has recently had its domain extension eclipsed by .cn (China). It’s my opinion that we will see massive droppings of .cn names as they come up for renewal. I believe that the low initial prices resulted in a wave of registrations that can’t be maintained, at least not yet. What are your thoughts?

Sabine Dolderer - Unfortunately I have not enough knowledge and information about the Chinese market to give a serious prediction. But reviewing the results of various price promotions from different registries, I tend to share your analysis that price promotions do not very often result in long term registrations.

RL - You are widely known and respected in the ccTLD community for all you have done over the years and how well the .de registry is run. I thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. Are there any last thoughts you would like to share? Is denic planning on doing anything interesting in the future that we can look forward to?

Sabine Dolderer - We have currently three main issues we are working on. First the implementation of our new transfer policy which is currently underway and will be finished in January 2010, another main issue is a complete rework of our nameserver infrastructure which we started January this year. This project will take us 2 years and the result will be a modern and flexible nameserver infrastructure combined with a significant increase of DNS capacity. And last but not least we have started a testbed for DNSSEC which will give us and our community the chance to test DNSSEC in a production environment.