CircleID

You have an error in your calculation.

The 37 cents that ICANN gets, rising to 50 cents, is ON TOP OF the current 25 cents that Registrars pay to ICANN.

So for each domain year, ICANN will get 37+25 or 62 cents immediately upon the signing of the agreement.

ICANN just basically increased their budget by about 12 million per year.

Oh, look at that. Section 7.2(e) keeps the existing Variable Registry-Level Fee at 15 cents plus a per registrar fee which doubtless adds up to the 25 cents.

So you're right, ICANN will be tripling the fee to 75 cents by the end of 2006.  Maybe I should charter my own plane to meetings.

Don't forget the 7% annual price increase. My math shows the price for a .com as being somewhere north of $12 by 2012.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me from the agreement (http://www.icann.org/tlds/agreements/verisign/com-registry-agreement-22sep05.pdf) that the ICANN and Verisign fees are recurring annual charges (and you also incur the ICANN fees for a domain transfer).

This is a little embarassing, but I have to admit I've never actually administered and operated the largest root domain in the world myself. Is this the sort of business that should justify 7% annual increases?

Yes indeed, they are recurring annual fees. You can prepay up to 10 years at the current rate.

As others have pointed out, Tucows informally offered to run .COM with a $2 fee, and Afilias in the .NET tender offered to run .NET for $3.25/domain/year, so it is hard to imagine what about .COM would cost $6, and even harder to imagine what would require a cost increase since computers and networks continue to get cheaper.

So if the question is, is this a blatant sellout to Verisign that ignores the interests of the broader Internet community, you can draw your own conclusions.