As if it shelling out $185,000 in application fees isn’t enough, ICANN commands an annual retainer of $25,000 dollars to maintain a gTLD active.
Finally someone had to speak out about the exorbitant fees paid by the gTLD registries to ICANN, to maintain a gTLD every year.
Tim Johnson, founder of Dot Kiwi Ltd., could not hide his frustration over the annual fees, in a new article.
With a little over 8,000 dot .Kiwi domains, the $25,000 fee is roughly $3 dollars per domain, going to the ICANN pockets. For the small but prideful community of New Zealanders, this fee is astronomical, particularly when compared to the mere $0.25 that Verisign pays to ICANN per domain.
We could not agree more; on another note, ICANN officers are paid rather handsomely.
For the full article, titled “New gTLD Fees Threaten the Diversity of the Name Space“, click here.