Budget woes plague Net administrator

July 2004

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers may be able to handle the Internet's complex address system, but crunching its own numbers may prove an even tougher job.

ICANN, based in Marina del Rey, Calif., is facing a tight deadline to revise its record $15.8 million budget to placate a growing number of rebellious registrars united in opposition to a new fee structure.

The nonprofit corporation on July 19 convenes for one week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where its board of directors will vote on the controversial budget, which nearly doubles last year's spending of $8.3 million.

Proposed in May, the budget modifies a tripartite fee structure for registrars, the ICANN-member businesses that sell domain names to the public. (Registries, by contrast, control individual top-level domains like ".com," or ".info.")

The new fee structure combines a $4,000 annual fee with two variable fees--one determined by how many registrars are ICANN members at the time, the other by how many domains a registrar sells. Fearful that the combined fees could top $19,000 and put them out of business, 75 smaller registrars have banded together to protest the budget.