VeriSign Raises .com, .net Registry Fees

When VeriSign renegotiated its domain contacts for .com and .net, many feared the company would begin raising rates. It appears as if some of those fears are being realized.

The company said later Thursday that it would raise the fees for .com domains to $6.42 from $6, a 7 percent increase, and from $3.50 to $3.85 for .net domains, a 10 percent increase. The changes would take effect on October 15.

The fees are paid to VeriSign by registrars when they request a domain for a customer. The money is then supposed to be used for the upkeep of that domain.

As part of the renegotiated terms of its new contracts with ICANN, VeriSign is allowed to raise fees without any justification by up to seven percent in four of the next six years. Since these increases were higher than that threshold, a reason is required.

VeriSign says the increases were necessary due to the rapid increase of Internet traffic since the last time the rates were changed eight years ago.

"Since 1999, the volume of Internet traffic and domain name system (DNS) queries on VeriSign's global infrastructure has increased from an average of 1 billion queries per day in the year 2000 to nearly 30 billion queries per day today," it said in a statement.

The company also needs to fight back against cyberattacks by hackers, which it claims has also become costly. Another project, known as "Titan," has been launched to increase DNS capacity tenfold by 2010.