Voices Rising Against Proposed ICANN Agreement With Verisign That Would Push .Com Prices Up 31% in 4 Years

ICANN
is again catching flak (on top of
the incoming
fire over the pending .org
registry sale) by proposing that .com
registry operator, Verisign,
be allowed to raise the wholesale
price of the world’s most popular
TLD 7% annually over each of
the final four years of their
current six-year contract. If
approved, the current wholesale
price to registrars of $7.85
would soar 31% to $10.26
by 2024.

Domain
registrants already pay well above
the wholesale price, of course, as
registrars have to mark up prices to
cover their overheard and marketing
costs and make enough of a profit to
stay in business. Big changes in the
wholesale rate force them to pass
price increases on to you. That
doesn’t make customers happy, so
many leading registrars are strongly
opposing the proposed agreement.


	You can make your feelings known too, as ICANN is accepting comments from the public through Friday, February 14. The Internet Commerce Association (ICA), the non-profit group that fights for domain registrant rights, has created a tool that makes it easy for anyone to file a comment. As of this writing, over 1,300 comments have been files and the number is growing quickly.

The
ICA released this statement about
the proposed agreement:

“Verisign
is the sole-source supplier of .com
domain names at the wholesale level,
giving them an effective
monopoly. When you register or
renew a domain name through your
registrar, such as GoDaddy or
NetworkSolutions, $7.85 of your
registration or renewal payment goes
to Verisign. The actual cost to
Verisign to provide the expensive
infrastructure and the management of
the registry has been estimated at
between $2.50 to $2.90 per
domain name per year. Other
registries have said they can offer
the same services at lower cost.
But ICANN does not allow other
companies the opportunity to bid to
operate the .com registry, for ICANN
has given Verisign the
perpetual right to operate the
.com registry – meaning forever!

As the cost to operate the .com
registry drops lower and lower,
Verisign’s profits are already
rising higher and higher. Verisign
already enjoys one of the highest
profit margins of any company in the
world. A further price
increase is not justified.
Yet ICANN staff has determined that
Verisign should be able to increase
prices on .com registrants by 7% per
year from the current $7.85 to
$10.26 after four years. This will
impose hundreds of millions of
dollars of added expense on .com
registrants – simply to benefit
Verisign.

ICANN is supposed to act in the
public interest, and be
responsive to public comment. This
comment period is your opportunity
to share your views with ICANN,
whether you think the price
increases are justified or
unjustified. You can learn more
about the issue in the following
articles: