Got exactly the same in French.

Like you, I do not understand why a company that is not for-profit sells services that goes far beyond the accountability of a TLD and does competition to Swiss hosting providers thru a strategic positioning of the advertisement. It is too easy: they sell hosting services and catch probably loads of illiterate people that don’t understand TLD and hosting are two different services.

I also found just amazing that they do not offer this service in any other language than German. On the French version, the order button contains a statement like “Products only available in German”.

I will not remind as well that they offer the chance to hosting companies to use their API and benefit of special rates with minimum commitment requirements. I hope someone will bid at the end of this mandate and that the OFCOM/BAKOM will not renew their license for operating the CH TLD and rather leave it to a company that is both really neutral and non-for-profit or to a big commercial corporation that will drop the prices of these domains even more.

I am even not too sure that operating the Swiss Research network thru SWITCH is more interesting than it would be by outsourcing it thru various ISPs...



2010/7/12 Viktor Steinmann <stony@stony.com>
I agree, that SWITCH should not have included this "switchplus" part in their info mail, as it's completely unrelated to the rest of the information. Also the banner on their website doesn't belong there, as no other entity can buy banner space there.

The best reaction might be a letter to the federal competition comission (WEKO), since SWITCH is obviously using its (still) good name and user data to push a product/a company in an unfair way.

I'm willing to sign such a letter, but I honestly wouldn't know, how to write one (lawyer's language...).

Kind regards,
Viktor


Martin Blapp wrote:
 Hi all,

This morning I got a mail from switch, our official swiss dns registry.

I remember that switch itself made years ago some policies to not use the
dns root .ch for advertising. And unfortunatly that's exactly what happens
here, IMHO this mail advertises nothing else than 'switch plus' and their services.

Unfortunatly the services from switchplus are NOT even hosted in switzerland,
they are reselled from germany. I've visited recently the switch webpage, and found
in the middle on the page a banner to switch plus. This is very problematic since
a lot of new people will follow this link and buy packages. All other swiss companies
don't have this opportunity to advertize.

Let's take another example. You all know the cantonal car-inspection MFK. For
me this is like the MFK would offer now car repair, car-cleaning services at the time
you have the car in inspection. What does an average customer then says to himself?
'Great, that's all from one place, from one hand, that's a deal, even if it is the same price
as before.' At the end, the local dealers have to close their business, because they
haven't the same rights the government and their institutions has.

Finally we all loose, if lot of ISPs and hosters have to close their doors because webhosting
and mailhosting is not able to finance the ADSL business anymore.

Switch, you have an offical mission from BAKOM, please only do what you
should do, and nothing else. Thank you !

Martin Blapp

 >Sehr geehrter Herr XXX
 >
 >Sie erhalten diese E-Mail, weil Sie bei SWITCH einen oder mehrere
 >.ch- oder .li-Domain-Namen registriert haben. Zurzeit werden Kunden von
 >SWITCH seitens Dritter aufgefordert, ihren Domain-Namen von SWITCH zu
 >einem anderen Anbieter zu transferieren. Dies mit der Begründung, dass
 >man bei SWITCH bald keine Domain-Namen mehr registrieren könne.
 >
 >Um mögliche Missverständnisse und Verunsicherungen zu vermeiden,
 >berichtigen wir diese Fehlinformationen wie folgt:
 >
 >SWITCH registriert und verwaltet die .ch-Domain-Namen im Auftrag des
 >Bundesamts für Kommunikation (BAKOM). Der Vertrag zwischen SWITCH und
 >dem BAKOM läuft bis zum Jahr 2015. Eine Erneuerung des Vertrags ist
 >möglich. Sie sind daher bei SWITCH gut aufgehoben und brauchen nichts
 >zu unternehmen.
 >
 >Mit der Gründung unserer Tochtergesellschaft switchplus haben wir die
 >Weichen für die Zukunft - unabhängig vom Vertrag mit dem BAKOM und
 >dessen Erneuerung - gestellt. switchplus bietet schon heute zusätzlich
 >zur Registrierung von Domain-Namen das Hosting von E-Mail und Web an.
 >
 >Als unabhängige Stiftung hat SWITCH für die Schweizer Hochschulen das
 >Internet in der Schweiz etabliert. Wir leisten einen wichtigen Beitrag
 >zur Stabilität des Internets und bieten qualitativ hochstehende
 >Dienstleistungen für Hochschulen und Dritte an.
 >
 >Für Fragen steht Ihnen unser Helpdesk jederzeit gerne zur Verfügung.
 >
 >Freundliche Grüsse
 >SWITCH Internet Domains



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