What's your view of ICANN's fee of 75 cents per domain, which has attracted some opposition?
It's difficult to say as an applicant. It's strange, and it's not equally shared with all generic top-level domains. It's a burden to dot-net and the operator of dot-net. All the other gTLD registries and registrants don't have to take that burden. It's a little unfair. I'm not sure if it's good for competition.
I haven't seen a deeply thought-through proposal about how the money raised from that fee will be spent. Maybe I'll change my mind.
Do you think that ICANN will try to extend its 75 cent per domain fee to other gTLDs?
I would expect that if they put it on other gTLDs they would reduce it from 75 cents. If you were to put it on dot-com, it would be a huge amount of money.
But I don't know what ICANN wants to do. I'm waiting for a proposal that clarifies the idea a little bit more.
What brought you to Washington, DC?
We thought that most people hadn't heard very much about DENIC. It was to educate and give people a chance to meet with us.
When you were visiting staffers and members of Congress, did you ever get a feeling that they were suspicious about dot-net being run by a non-US company?
Not really, actually. I found the meetings very open and productive. People in general are very interested and seem to be very open-minded.
In meeting with the Commerce Department, did you get a feeling that they had a point of view on the dot-net registry or were going to leave it in the hands of ICANN?
As far as I know, the Commerce Department wants to stay as neutral as possible.
When would you expect to reduce DENIC's proposed $5.40 fee even more?
As you might know, under the current registration structure with VeriSign, it's possible to register domains for more than one year -- even two or three or four years. The fees that registrants have paid will not be refunded to their owners.
Will they be transferred to you?
No. (Eventually) it will be possible to reduce the fee much further. We have that information detailed in the proposal. We hope that people will not register with VeriSign for longer than June 2005.
Can you release the proposal?
The business plan detail is confidential. But what we have done is [calculated how much multiyear domain name registrations paid to VeriSign] will cost us. In the most optimistic approach, we believe we can reduce the fees in two years.
To what level?
The most optimistic scenario is that we would reduce the fees in 2008 to $4.80 and in 2009 to $3.60. That's the most optimistic figure.
You run the dot-de domain, but those domain registrations would be cheaper than .net. why?
It has something to do with .net having a worldwide customer base. So you have to provide many more languages and provide the service 24 hours a day because of time zone differences. The personnel costs are higher.
