Wholesale prices for Internet addresses ending in “.info” are going up 2.5 percent on Oct. 15, the same day fees for “.com” and “.net” are increasing.
Afilias Ltd., which runs “.info,” disclosed the scheduled increase in a letter last week to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet’s key oversight agency.
The per-name fee is what Afilias collects annually from registrars, the companies that sell domain names on Afilias’ behalf. Such charges are generally incorporated in the prices companies, groups and individuals pay to register names, and they apply to new registrations, transfers and renewals.
An increase of up to 10 percent a year was authorized under ICANN’s latest contract with Afilias, dated Dec. 8. Afilias chose to increase fees by 15 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $6.15.
Earlier this month, VeriSign Inc. announced it would increase the annual fee for “.com” by 7 percent to $6.42, and the “.net” fee by 10 percent to $3.85. VeriSign said the fee increases stem from a need to keep up with growing online use as well as threats from hackers.
Afilias did not cite a reason in its letter to ICANN.
The “.info” suffix was one of seven ICANN approved in 2000 in the first major expansion of Internet addresses since the system was created in the 1980s. It is the world’s sixth most popular domain name, though it has only about 7 percent of the registrations that “.com” has.
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