[arin-announce] ACSP Consultation 2021.3 - ARIN Fees is Now Closed

[ARIN]

ARIN thanks those who provided valuable feedback during the Consultation on ARIN Fees. The feedback from the community will be provided to the Board for their consideration. Overall, input from the community was supportive of work toward harmonizing fees to achieve equitable cost recovery including:

- Increasing the Transfer Fees to $500
- Adding transaction fees for OrgCreate and OrgRecovery
- The need for cost-recovery necessary to support the continued development and deployment of Internet routing security services (i.e., RPKI and authenticated IRR)
- Harmonizing fees for all customers as fast as reasonably may be accomplished
- Simplifying the process of working with ARIN via a single uniform fee schedule

Several interesting points were raised in the discussion, and we did our best to address informational questions as they occurred during the consultation. We urge customers to review this dialog in the consultation mailing list archives (https://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-consult/). 

The input provided by the community is a vital part of our planning processes at ARIN, and after reviewing responses to the consultation we will recommend that the Board adopt the proposed 2022 Fee Schedule with a minor adjustment. Due to concerns that a charge of $100 for OrgCreate transactions might create a deterrent to update reassignment data, we plan to reduce the fee for OrgCreate to $50. While this will not allow us to achieve our goal of full cost recovery for these transactions, we feel it achieves an appropriate balance between consideration for the services and encouraging maintenance of accurate registry data.

Another major point raised during the consultation was regarding the need for more equitable treatment of legacy resource holders – in particular whether there could be a faster transition from capped fees to the standard fee schedule. We did weigh several options suggested by the community, but we intend to proceed as planned (i.e., increasing the cap on total annual registry maintenance fees for legacy resource holders by $25 per year.)  While this cap is not required contractually for all legacy resource holders, we will apply it uniformly in order to provide equitable fees of similarly situated organizations.

To help customers understand the impact of the Fee Schedule changes we recently updated the ARIN Fee Calculator, available through ARIN Online, to display both the current estimated fees and estimated fees under the proposed 2022 fee schedule. Customers are encouraged use this tool to determine the impact of the fee schedule harmonization on their organizations.

This Fee Harmonization was developed with the express goal of ensuring costs are distributed in an equitable manner by eliminating the current fee differentiation between ISP and end user organizations. These changes will allow ARIN to continue to develop and provide the high-quality services demanded by our customers and the Internet community, including our routing security services which are increasingly crucial to all our customers.

On behalf of ARIN, I would like to thank everyone who participated in the discussion – your efforts in this and other consultations help keep us aligned with the needs and expectations of the ARIN community.

Sincerely,

John Curran  
President and CEO  
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)