RE: [registrars] ICANN Proposed budget is out for public comment

["Bhavin Turakhia" <bhavin.t@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 4) The registrar fee.  If ICANN were to get rid of the annual 
> fee, it would have to raise the proposed $.25/transaction to 
> $.36/transaction in order to make up for the difference.  

I would appreciate it if you did not overlook the fact that that is exactly
what the new budget is doing. It is increasing the per domain fee of SMALLER
Registrars by $0.60 and above while not doing the same to larger Registrars.
It is quite easy to make the above statement when Register.com is going to
have a less than 1 cent impact on their per domain cost

> to be honest that while some small registrars truly operate 
> solely as registrars, others make very large margins by 
> selling connections or other services for which domain names 
> are simply loss leaders, and they will not be impacted by a 
> nominal annual fee.

Until WLS (which incidentally has been approved) comes in. So what is the
recourse now -

* the backorder money that smaller registrars were making now goes to
Verisign Registry

* the legitimate money that smaller registrars were making now cant be made
because suddenly their cost has shot through the roof

So in two consecutive quarters ICANN has decided to cut out the smaller
registrars completely by stifling all possible sources of making operational
profit

bhavin