Icann and Verisign settlement results in dot com and dot net increase
Pricing on Domain names in the dot com and dot net tlds is going up, as we all predicted when ICANN settled its suit with Verisign. Because of the sweetheart settlement Verisign was handed by the US Government and ICANN, no regulatory oversight or approval of this increase is necessary. “The annual levy for ‘’.com'’ will increase 7 percent to $6.42 (euro4.80), and the ‘’.net'’ fee will go up 10 percent to $3.85 (euro2.88). The per-name fees are what VeriSign Inc. collects from companies that sell domain names on its behalf, and such charges are generally incorporated in the prices companies, groups and individuals pay to register names . . . However, the price hike applies only to new name registrations and renewals, and customers can lock in the old prices until Oct. 14. Many brokers, known as registrars, offer multiyear deals for up to 10 years; Network Solutions, formerly owned by VeriSign, even offers a 100-year package.”
According to an article in Internet News at the time of the Settlement with Verisign:
Currently wholesale domain pricing, that is the price that VeriSign charges to ICANN approved registrars is $6.00. The revised deal would enable VeriSign to raise domain pricing in at least 4 of the next six years by 7 percent which leads to a 2012 domain price of $7.86 according to a calculation by BulkRegistrar. Based on an estimate of 47.6 million dot com domains in 2006, BulkRegistrar estimates that VeriSign will gross $285.5 million this year from its dot com mastery.
With the conservative expectation that dot com domain registrations will grow at a 10 percent growth rate, BulkRegistrar has forecast that in 2012 there will be 84.3 million dot com domains registered. The cumulative calculated gross revenue from 2006 through 2012 including pricing increases is forecast to yield VeriSign a total of $3.29 billion dollars.
Under the terms of the October deal, VeriSign could actually have raised prices in all 6 years which would have grossed an additional $140 million of dot com revenue.
The current price hike is 7 percent on dot coms and 10 percent on dot nets.
Technorati Tags: dot com, dot net, Verisign price hike, ICANN, Raw deal on domain names
