Domisfera

On the same day that Domain Name Wire published a email sent by VeriSign to the Registrars, the company announced in a press release that from the day October 1, 2008 the rate charged for the .com domains will rise from 6.42$ to 6.86$ (+ 6.85%) and .net  will rise from 3.85$ to 4.23$ (+ 9.87%). 

According to VeriSign contracts with ICANN and the Department of Commerce of the United States is empowered to raise .com up to 7% and .net up to 10% each year. That was exactly the price increases implemented VeriSign last year. This year, VeriSign almost reached those figures.

In two years .com domains will move from 6$ to 6.86$ (+ 14.33%) and .net domains from 3.50$ to 4.23$ (+ 20.85%). While the year 2007 was the first since 1999 that prices rose VeriSign seems to be the trend in the coming years because the arguments to justify the rise this year are very similar to those of last year: to increase the capacity of the infrastructure DNS and to increase security against increasingly numerous and sophisticated cyber attacks.

As a counterpoint to these justifications, Karl Auerbach (a former board member of the ICANN), said last year at this time that VeriSign could spend less than 0.14$ in order to maintain a domain registration.