ICANN, with $143 million budget, running out of cash

ICANN is to tighten its belt over the coming year as lower than expected revenue from domain name registrations has caused a budget shortfall and dwindling reserves.
The organization is $1 million short so far in its fiscal 2018, which CEO Goran Marby says is forcing him to look at making cuts to staffing costs, travel expenses, and community-requested projects.
Meanwhile, chair Cherine Chalaby says the board of directors is worried that ICANN’s reserve fund is $80 million shy of where it ideally should be.
Both men outlined their priorities in separate end-of-year blog posts this week.
It does not yet appear that anyone’s job is on the line.
Marby indicated that headcount would be reduced through attrition — sometimes not replacing staff who leave — rather than lay-offs.
“The reality is, ICANN has a significant budget but not an infinite budget. We need to make some changes, and can’t do everything we are asked,” he wrote, before explaining some areas where “efficiencies” could be found.

For example, when someone leaves ICANN org, we are taking a close look at the vacancy, the team’s needs and other people’s availability and skills before deciding if we are going to fill the role. We are also looking at our staff travel practices for ICANN meetings and other ICANN org commitments, reviewing our language services support levels and offering, and trying to consolidate our collateral and the volume of reports. We are looking at what projects we could delay or stop

Some might say that this renewed focus on how ICANN manages its money is overdue. The organization has bloated fast over the last several years, as over 1,200 new gTLD registries became contracted parties and interest in ICANN’s work grew globally.
In its financial year ending June 2012, it budgeted for revenue of $69.7 million and expenses of $67 million.
For FY2017, which ended this June, it was up to revenue of $132.4 million and expenses of $126.5 million.
Over the same period, headcount swelled from 158 full-time equivalents to 365. That was anticipated to grow to 413 by next June.
For the financial year ending next June, ICANN had budgeted for $142.8 million revenue, growing from $135.9 million, but Marby said in his blog post today that it might actually be flat instead.
As much as 64% of ICANN’s revenue is driven by transaction volumes — registrations, renewals and transfers — in gTLDs. In the quarter to September, revenue was $1 million behind plan due to lower than expected transactions, Marby said.
The message is to expect cuts, possibly to projects you care about.
Adding complexity, the ICANN board has decided following public consultation at 12 months funding is the appropriate amount ICANN should be keeping in reserve — so it can continue to function for a year should its contracted parties all abruptly decide not to pay their dues.
Unfortunately, as Chalaby outlined in his post today, this reserve pool is currently at about $60 million — just five months’ worth — so the organization is going to have to figure out how to replenish it.
Building up reserves to the tune of an extra $80 million is likely to put more pressure on the regular annual budget, leeching cash from other projects.
Chalaby said that the board will discuss its options at its February 2018 workshop.
Marby, meanwhile, said that a new budget will be out for public comment in mid-January.

3 Comments Tagged: budget, ICANN, new gTLDs

New Trump appointee slams ICANN after security group shutdown

Not even a month into the job, the US official with most direct responsibility over domain name policy has criticized ICANN for shutting down a security working group.
David Redl, the new assistant secretary at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, wrote to ICANN (pdf) last week to complain about its board unilaterally shutting down, temporarily, its supposedly independent Security, Stability and Resiliency of the DNS Review team.
He wrote that the action “calls into question” ICANN’s commitment to transparency and accountability, writing:

Everything documented to date about these reviews stresses the importance of openness, transparency and community consultation. Unfortunately, it seems that with the October 28th action, the ICANN Board violated these principles by substituting its judgement for that of the community.

SSR-2, as it is known, is one of the reviews previously mandated by ICANN’s Affirmation of Commitments with the US government (via the NTIA) but which can now be found instead embedded in its bylaws.
The ICANN board of directors temporarily suspended it in October, something like a soft reboot, after growing concerned that it was stepping outside of its mandate and that its members lacked expertise.
The move attracted broad criticism and it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that Redl’s position is a controversial one — you’d be hard pressed to find any section of the community that wholeheartedly supports the board’s action.
Indeed, the US representative to the Governmental Advisory Committee voiced similar concerns at the ICANN meeting in Abu Dhabi in late October, prior to Redl’s confirmation to the NTIA job.
Redl took the post November 21, having been nominated by Donald Trump back in May, replacing Obama appointee Larry Strickling, who left the agency in January.
He’s the first NTIA chief since ICANN’s inception not to enjoy the special position of power over ICANN granted by the old IANA contract, which was scrapped in September 2016.

Comment Tagged: abu dhabi, gac, iana, ICANN, ntia, security, ssr-2

Second delay for domain security key rollover

ICANN has decided to delay changing the security keys to the DNS for the second time.
The “KSK Rollover” had been rescheduled from October 11 to some time in the first quarter 2018, but that will no longer happen. We’re now looking at Q3 at the earliest.
“We have decided that we do not yet have enough information to set a specific date for the rollover,” VP of research Matt Larson said in a blog post. “We want to make clear, however, that the ICANN org is committed to rolling the root zone KSK”.
The root KSK, or Key Signing Key, is the cryptographic key pair at the very top of the security hierarchy specified by DNSSEC, the security extension for DNS.
The current, first-ever, root KSK has been in operation since 2010, but ICANN’s policy is to roll it every five years or so.
The October date was delayed after newly available data showed that hundreds of DNS resolvers were still only configured to use the 2010 keys and not the 2017 keys that have already been deployed in tandem.
This would mean a rollover would cut off access to DNSSEC-signed zones to potentially millions of internet users.
ICANN found that 4% of the 12,000 DNSSEC-validating resolvers — roughly 500 IP addresses — it surveyed in September were not ready for KSK-2017.
Larson told us last month that at least 176 organizations in 41 countries were affected.
Since the first delay, ICANN has been trying to contact the owners of the 500 incompatible IP addresses but has run into some serious problems, Larson blogged.
First, a significant number of these addresses are dynamically allocated (such as to home broadband hubs) meaning tracking down the owners of the misconfigured devices would be next to impossible. Others were forwarding DNS queries on behalf of other devices, creating a similar problem.
Additionally, it seems ICANN has still not received responses from owners of 80% of the affected IP addresses.
Due to the lack of reliable data, it’s difficult for ICANN to figure out how many users’ internet access will be affected by a rollover.
The threshold called for by current policy is about 20 million people.
So ICANN has delayed the event to some point after Q1. Larson wrote that the organization will publish a plan on January 18 which will be open for public comment and discussed at the ICANN 61 meeting in Puerto Rico next March.
A final plan is not expected until ICANN 62, which happens in late June, so Q3 would be the earliest the rollover could actually occur.
Larson encouraged anyone interested in discussing the plan to join this mailing list.

Comment Tagged: DNSSEC, ICANN, ksk, rollover

Justice gives nod to O.com auction

The US Department of Justice does not intend to prevent Verisign from auctioning off the single-letter domain o.com.
Aaron Hoag, chief of the department’s Technology & Financial Services Section, told ICANN in a letter (pdf) that it does not intend to probe Verisign’s proposal.
The letter reads in its entirety:

Your letter dated December 7, 2017, to Makan Delrahim, Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division, regarding VeriSign’s proposal to auction O.COM, has been referred to the Technology & Financial Services Section for review. After careful consideration of the matter, the Division can report that it does not intend to open an investigation into the proposed auction described in the attachment to your letter.

Verisign asked ICANN’s permission to auction o.com, with most of the the proceeds going to good causes, after over a decade of nagging from retailer Overstock.com, which desperately wants to own the currently reserved name.
It would set a precedent for the company to sell off the remaining 22 single-letter domains, not to mention the 10 digits, which are all currently reserved due to a decades-old technical policy no longer considered necessary.
Verisign would only receive its $7.85 base registry fee from the sale, despite the fact that single-letter domains could easily fetch seven or eight figures.
The company asked ICANN for permission to release the name via its Registry Services Evaluation Process last month.
ICANN said earlier this month that it had no objection on technical grounds, but referred it to US competition authorities for a review.
With the DoJ apparently not interested, the door is open for ICANN to approve the RSEP before the end of the year, meaning Verisign could carry out the auction in 2018.
The big question now is whether anyone other than Overstock will want to take part in the auction. Overstock has US trademarks on “O.com”, despite the fact that it’s never actually owned the domain.

Comment Tagged: antitrust, doj, ICANN, justice, o.com, overstock.com, rsep, verisign

Davies named new IANA boss

Kim Davies has been named the new head of IANA.
ICANN said today that he’s been promoted from his role as director of technical services to VP of IANA services and president of Public Technical Identifiers, the company that manages the IANA functions.
With ICANN since 2005, he replaces Elise Gerich, who announced her departure, originally scheduled for October, back in April.
Gerich has been IANA’s top staffer since 2010 and was PTI’s first president.
IANA is responsible for overseeing the top-level domain database, as well as the allocation of IP address blocks and protocol numbers.
Starting January 1, Davies will be in the top spot when ICANN executes the first-ever rollover of the root system’s most important DNSSEC keys, due to delays.

Comment Tagged: iana, ICANN, pti

Shocker! After 15 years, Afilias kicks Neustar out of Australia

Afilias has been awarded the contract to run .au, Australia’s ccTLD, kicking out incumbent Neustar after 15 years.
It’s currently a 3.1 million-domain contract, meaning it’s going to be the largest back-end transition in the history of the DNS.
It’s also very likely going to see the price of a .au domain come down.
Neustar, via its 2015 acquisition of AusRegistry, has been the back-end provider for .au since 2002. That deal is now set to end July 1, 2018.
auDA, the ccTLD manager, said today that Afilias was selected from a shortlist of three bidders, themselves whittled down from the initial pool of nine.
It’s not been disclosed by auDA who the other shortlisted bidders were, and Afilias execs said they do not know either. I suspect Neustar would have been one of them.
The contract was put up for bidding in May, after auDA and Neustar failed to come to terms on a renewal.
At 3.1 million domains under management, .au is currently bigger than .org was when Afilias took over the back-end from Verisign in 2003.
Back then, .org was at 2.7 million names. It’s now at over 10 million.
“It’s the biggest transition ever, but not by much,” Afilias chief marketing officer Roland LaPlante said.
CTO Ram Mohan said that it should actually be easily than the .org transition, which had the added wrinkle of switching registrars from Verisign’s legacy RPP protocol to the now-standard EPP.
auDA said that Afilias will start reaching out to the 40-odd current .au registrars about the transition “as early as this week”.
About half of registrars are already on Afilias’ back-end and about half are ICANN-accredited, LaPlante said.
“We don’t expect to have many changes for registrars, but we have plenty of time to prepare them for what is needed,” Mohan said. “It ought to be a fairly easy glide path.”
There will be a live test environment for registrars to integrate with prior to the formal handover, he said.
There are several local presence requirements to the contract, so Afilias will open up a 20-person office in Melbourne headed by current VP of corporate services John Kane, who will shortly move there.
The company will also have to open a data center there, as the contract requires all data to be stored in-country.
Mohan, LaPlante and Kane said they’re all jumping on planes to Melbourne tonight to begin transition talks with local interested parties.
Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed right now, but LaPlante said that .au registrars should see prices come down. This could lead to lower prices for registrants.
They currently pay AUD 17.50 ($13.44) per domain for a two-year registration, and I believe Neustar’s cut is currently around the $5 (USD) per year mark.
Afilias is not known for being a budget-end back-end provider, but it seems its slice of the pie will be smaller than Neustar’s.
LaPlante said that fees charged to registrars will be set by auDA, but that it now has flexibility to reduce prices that it did not have under the incumbent.
“Some savings should flow down to registrars as part of this,” he said.
The term of the contract is “four or five years” with options to renew for additional years, he said.
The loss of .au has no doubt come as a blow to Neustar, which paid $87 million for AusRegistry parent Bombrra just two years ago.
While Bombora also had dozens of new gTLD clients, many dot-brands, .au was undoubtedly its key customer.

3 Comments Tagged: .au, afilias, auda, ausregistry, back-end, contract, neustar

.sx switches from KSRegistry to CIRA’s Fury

Sint Maarten ccTLD .sx has changed registry back-end providers.
SX Registry has switched from Germany’s KSRegistry to Canada’s CIRA, according to a CIRA press release and IANA records.
SX is now using CIRA’s relatively new Fury back-end platform, which launched a bit over a year ago with the new gTLD .kiwi as its inaugural customer.
The transition took under 30 days, according to CIRA, which built Fury using its experience managing Canadian ccTLD .ca.
Sint Maarten is a relatively new country, formed when the Netherlands Antilles’ .an split into three new ccTLDs in 2010.
.an has since been retired.
SX Registry won the deal to operate the TLD and launched it in 2012. The company, while technically based on the island, is run by a Canadian.

Comment Tagged: .ca, .sx, cira, fury, sx registry

Radix says it’s profitable after making $12 million this year

New gTLD stable Radix said today that it expects to top $12 million in revenue this year.
The company also told DI that it is currently profitable.
Radix, which counts the likes of .site and .store among its portfolio of nine active gTLDs, said revenue so far for the calendar year has been tallied at $11.7 million.
The company said that more than half of revenue came from “non-premium domain renewals”, an important metric when considering the long-term health of a domain business.
Recurring revenue of non-premiums was almost twice as much as new registrations, Radix said. Only $1.76 million of revenue came from premium sales (14%) and renewals (86%).
The US accounted for just under half of revenue, with Germany at 14.4% and China, where .site was fully active for the whole year and four other TLDs were approved in October, coming in at 7.7%.
Radix is a private company, part of the Directi Group, and has not previously disclosed its financials.
Assuming apples-to-apples comparisons are valid (which may not be the case), its figures compare favorably to public competitors such as MMX, which expects to report 2017 in the same ball-park despite having more than twice as many gTLDs under management.

Comment Tagged: earnings, financials, radix, revenue

Expect “minor inconveniences” in post-hurricane Puerto Rico

ICANN 61 is going ahead in Puerto Rico despite the continuing fallout of a devastating hurricane season, the organization has confirmed.
The March 10-15 meeting will take place at the convention center in San Juan, and participants can only expect “minor inconveniences”
ICANN said in a statement:

We recognize that Puerto Rico is still in the recovery phase, and while we can expect some minor inconveniences, the convention center and supporting hotels are fully operational and eager to host our event in March.

ICANN has not yet listed its official supporting hotels, where it usually negotiates bulk discounts, on the official ICANN 61 page.
In the event you, like me, always find ICANN’s approved hotels a tad on the pricey side, you’ll probably need to do your own research.
ICANN added that it has been working with the island’s governor and that: “We have been assured that our presence in San Juan will support economic recovery on the island.”
Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, killing at least 48 people and causing billions of dollars in property damage.
The convention center venue for ICANN 61 escaped relatively unscathed and was actually used as a command and control center during the immediate aftermath of the disaster.

Comment Tagged: hurricane maria, ICANN, icann 61, puerto rico

.kids auction is off

ICANN has postponed the planned auction of the .kid(s) gTLDs after an appeal from one of the applicants.
The last-resort auction had been penciled in for January 25, and there was a December 8 deadline for the three participants to submit their info to the auctioneer.
But DotKids Foundation, the shallowest-pocketed of the three, filed a Request for Reconsideration last Wednesday, asking ICANN to put the contention set back on hold.
The cancellation of the January auction appears to be to give ICANN’s board of directors time to consider the RfR under its usual process — it has not yet ruled on it.
DotKids and Amazon have applied for .kids and Google has applied for .kid. A String Confusion Objection won by Google put the two strings in the same contention set, meaning only one will eventually go live.
DotKids comprehensively lost a Community Priority Evaluation, which would negate an auction altogether, but it thinks the CPE got it wrong and wants to be treated the same way as other gTLD applicants whose CPE results are currently under review.
Reconsideration requests take between 30 and 90 days to process, and they rarely go the way of the requester, so the delay to the auction will likely not be too long.

Comment Tagged: .kid, .kids, amazon, auction, cpe, dotkids, google, ICANN, last resort, new gTLDs, reconsideration, rfr