Re: [ga] Can someone explain how ICANN spends $1 million/yr+ on telephone costs?

[Hugh Dierker <hdierker2204@xxxxxxxxx>]

It seems it is good to evaluate and criticize ICANNs spending and investing. It 
would be hard for me to believe they were any good at it. I hope it is not 
necessarily a priority. Personally I think they should be spending everypenny 
they have on outreach to people. I guess this would require some rather 
extravagant expenses in: Travel, fellowship programs, communications and lists 
like this one.
 
I could see how it might be hard for someone not in the public relations and 
policy field to think these were wasted expenses. And I think most of us would 
agree that a lawyers communication with his client would probably not cost to 
much in that the lack of communication is the number one complaint about 
lawyers in the west.

--- On Tue, 2/3/09, George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [ga] Can someone explain how ICANN spends $1 million/yr+ on telephone 
costs?
To: ga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tuesday, February 3, 2009, 8:22 PM

Hi folks,

According to page 26 of the current budget:

http://www.icann.org/en/financials/adopted-opplan-budget-v3-fy09-25jun08-en.pdf

ICANN spends over $1 million/yr on telephone costs. Say ICANN has 100
staff --- that would be $10,000/yr per person on telephone calls!

Doesn't that sound a *wee* bit expensive, given VOIP, PBX and other
technologies? Unless they're calling a lot of 1-900 numbers (call it
"research in relation to the .xxx application") this seems very
expensive to me. But, perhaps someone else who has $800/month phone
bills (for each and every employee) can explain this to me (my own
business telephone costs are roughly one-tenth that per month, and
would be even lower if scaled over more employees).

Or, put another way, that's a new iPhone each and every month, with the
old one tossed into the garbage can!

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.leap.com/