Says that VeriSign should not be allowed to raise .com prices without cost-based justification as technology, server, bandwidth and storage costs have declined.
GoDaddy.com, an
ICANN accredited registrar, today voiced its strong disapproval of a
pending agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN) and VeriSign.
The proposed ICANN-VeriSign settlement agreement would
allow VeriSign to raise registration fees by 7% annually in four of the
next six years. It also would give VeriSign control of the .com
registry indefinitely, as it extends VeriSign's 'presumptive renewal'
right when this proposed settlement agreement ends in 2012.
Go Daddy says that industry research verifies that costs involved in
the technology critical to the domain name registration infrastructure
are continually decreasing. Additionally, server, bandwidth and storage
costs have declined and these downward trends do not appear to be
slowing.
"Under no circumstances should VeriSign be allowed to raise .com
prices without cost-based justification," said Bob Parsons, CEO and
Founder of GoDaddy.com. "If VeriSign does request an increase, it needs
to result in competitive bidding for the registry contract. This would
certainly create lower prices, not higher, just as it did for the .net
registry."
".com domain names still account for more than 80% of net new
registrations. If there is any automatic change in pricing in the
agreement, it should be for an annual decrease resulting from economies
of scale and efficiencies that naturally occur in our industry,"
Parsons said.