Stephane Vangelder : ICANN may review new TLD fees
New gTLDs being discussed during an open public session at the Cairo ICANN meeting, last November. Photo SVG.
Last Monday ICANN held a new gTLD Q&A session hosted by the GNSO Council. The subject of ICANN's proposed fee structure for initial evaluation and annual registry fees was once again at the centre of much of the discussions, during which it transpired that said fees may well be revised in the forthcoming second draft applicant guidebook (DAG), due out in February 2009.
A recording of the two hour telephone session is publicly available on the GNSO Council's calendar page (see "mp3" link for December 8 entry).
At one point during the session, I put a very direct question to Kurt Pritz, one of the people in charge of the new gTLD programme at ICANN. "Is there a good chance that the fee structure will change?" Kurt answered that yes, that was a possibility.
That doesn't mean that it's now written in stone that the proposed $185,000 evaluation fees or the $75,000/5% (whichever the greater) annual fees will change, but it does look more likely now.
It also shows that ICANN is doing exactly what it said it would do. It's taking a long hard look at all the comments being made on the first DAG, and there have been many on the question of fees, and it's acting upon them.
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