VeriSign Mum on Price Hike Plans

As the maintainer of the .com and .net registries, VeriSign has enormous influence in the markets for those top-level domains (TLDs), which include most of the Internet's most valuable names. VeriSign has recently negotiated separate agreements with ICANN to continue managing the two registries. The .net agreement was finalized last year, and provides some flexibility for VeriSign to raise prices going forward. A similar agreement for .com was also negotiated with ICANN as part of a broader settlement of litigation between the two organizations, but is under review amid objections from registrars. VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos commented on the new agreements in the company's earnings call last week, but didn't say much about VeriSign's pricing plans:

If (the .com agreement) goes through as it’s currently written, we would have the opportunity starting in ’07 to raise prices. We’ve made no decisions whether we would do that or not but at least the flexibility will be there. And as well in the new .net contract we currently do have that flexibility starting, I believe in 2007 as well. So there is some opportunity for pricing flexibility in the future. Whether we’ll choose to exercise that as soon as we can or not, we haven’t made those decisions yet.

Sclavos said the agreements set a ceiling on annual price increases, which is 10 percent for .net and currently envisioned at 7 percent for .com domains.

  Posted by RichM January 31, 2006 | Permalink | Newsletter

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VeriSign Mum on Price Hike Plans - Jan 31, 2006





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