Let us all bend over, apply the Vaseline...

  > Bob Atkins <bob at DigiLink.Net> writes:
  > 
  > > David Conrad:
  > > 
  > > Judging by the precedent of RIPE and APNIC, the fee will drop in the
  > > second year. My estimat is that it will fall to between $1900 and $2100
  > > in the second year and then fall to around $1800 in the third year.
  > 
  > Ha! Wishfull thinking. I sincerely doubt that ARIN will ever reduce the
  > fees but I am confident that they will probably increase.  A monopoly,
  > whether non-profit or for-profit has *absolutely* no incentive to lower
  > prices *or* reduce their backend costs. They have a captive market and
  > no other authority to hold them accountable.

Not wishful thinking at all. 
ARIN will be responsible to its customers/members. 
There is a lot of incentive coming from them.

*** There is an existence proof that it can work ! ***

The RIPE NCC has been working like that.  In April we had our fifth
anniversary.  We have been operating with budgets approved by the
customers from quite some time now.  We have been consistently reducing
fees.  I am not saying that we will continue to do that because I cannot
predict the future.  However the trend is quite clear and strong.  More
importantly the decisions are made by our customers themselves.  We have
a very constructive and challenging dialogue with our customers who have
to approve

	- activities
	- expenditure (operating costs)
	- revenue
	- charging scheme

We are very much aware that we exist to serve the more than 600 ISPs that
are our customers and that it would be very bad for us if a significant 
number of them were unhappy enough to consider alternatives for our 
services.

Given that ARIN is in a somewhat similar situation (understatement of the
day) it is very likely that developments are going to be similar.
It would be enligtening to hear if someone sees any significant differences
between ARIN's situation and the RIPE NCC.

Regards

Daniel


PS: All discussions about the RIPE NCC activities and financial matters are 
documented in public documents, minutes and mailing list archives.  
The current documents are 

    ripe-143     Alternative Models for RIPE NCC Revenue & Charging 1997 
    ripe-144     RIPE NCC Activities & Expenditure 1997 
    ripe-145     RIPE NCC Contributors Committee 1996 Annual Meeting 
    ripe-146     RIPE NCC Charging Scheme 1997 

They can be found at

	http://www.ripe.net/docs/ripe-143.html
	ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-143.txt
	ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-143.ps
        ....

Daniel