Quoting Deus Ex Machina on Tuesday June 24, 2003:
| 
| being a serious about being a registrar is not cheap. Enetica has spent
| over $.25m on its software alone. the $3000 dollar/year is only a barrier to
| entry to small players who will only register a few dozen domains a month.
| 
| the fundamental problem in my mind is the market is too small to support
| even the current number of registrars. smaller registrars would do a lot better
| to become virtual registrars and not bother trying to reinvent the wheel.

For a completely different perspective:

Being a registrar just for yourself and/or your hand-picked clients is
easy. You don't need to spend $250,000 on software if all you need is a
registry interface for your own internal use. Undoubtedly Enetica has
invested in software to support its resellers, customers, etc with a high
level of automation and flexibility, but writing something to handle a
small batch of customers is nowhere near as complicated.

You could write an EPP client in a weekend (I did on another ccTLD's
testbed) with enough sophistication* that I think would be sufficient to
run a registrar for 100 clients, whose applications I was manually
processing anyway.

kim

* That said I don't actually know what auDA's tech accrediation hurdles
  are. I assume they just mean you speak proper EPP draft 6..