[arin-ppml] {Spam?} Re: Open Letter Regarding 650% Rate-Hike for Legacy Users

[John Curran]

On 17 Sep 2021, at 2:21 PM, hostmaster at uneedus.com<mailto:hostmaster at uneedus.com> wrote:

While everyone is worried about their fee increase, maybe it is time to look at the other side of the ledger and find out exactly what is being paid for, and if things can be done to help control those costs.

Is there a breakdown of exactly what are the things that our fees pay for, and are they all related to management of our resources?

Also, are all the things listed consumed by everyone with number resources?  If not, maybe those costs not used by everyone should be borne by ONLY those that are using these services. For example SWIP is not needed by those who do not provide assignments above the minimums or not at all.

If billing and collection is a big item, maybe we should have a base customer charge like utility companies that cover only those billing charges.  Also, maybe al larger base customer charge for those that must have a mailed statement, instead of an electronic statement.

Have we ever really taken a good look at these costs, with a mind to controlling costs?  We might find some things that cost a lot are not really that important.

20% is a good chunk of change.  What costs have gone up that are driving this increase, and what is the driver of that need for more revenue?

Albert -

ARIN’s annual budget is posted online, as well as our actual financial results -
<https://www.arin.net/about/corporate/planning/>
<https://www.arin.net/about/corporate/annual/>

The ARIN Board of Trustees review and approves each year's budget - the budgets are developed by ARIN’s management team in conjunction with the Board's Finance Committee, and this often results in reductions and/or changes to the planned activities in order to meet fiscal targets.  Regarding your question "we ever really taken a good look at these costs, with a mind to controlling costs?”, I can say that definitely happens and ARIN has even had times when we have had to reduce staff to maintain appropriate cost levels.    We also take key items each year and recompete/rebid them to in order to make sure we’re getting any available cost savings and minimize expense creep.

We have instituted some transactions fees for activities that have a significant labor component (e.g. review and approval of transfers), but have not broken down registry services otherwise into separate fee items (e.g. use of ARIN Online vs RDAP vs IRR vs RPKI etc.) It has been our philosophy that all customers should receive the full set of registry services and thus have the freedom to make the best technical decision regarding which is appropriate to their circumstances.   We could certainly change this, but recognize that it would initially drive overall costs upwards, as fine grain accounting of costs to the individual service element means additional overhead.

You ask about drivers for more revenue, and I will note two items of significance.   First is that ARIN’s operating expenses do increase approximately 2 to 3% annually due to increases in salary and benefits (particularly health care.)   This is not a major concern in any given year, but does require some periodic adjustment to revenues to offset.  The second item of note is that the ARIN Board recently decided that our annual operating expenses should directly correspond to our annual customer revenues (rather than customer revenues plus anticipated proceeds from investment of ARIN’s financial reserves as we have budgeted in that past) – approximately $1.5M of the additional revenue will offset that change.    [Some benefits of this change is that our our in-year expenses and revenues will be in better alignment, and further that the fulll proceeds from the investment of our long-term reserves will go to strengthen our reserve position.]

You can find more detail on ARIN’s results and financial position in the Treasurer’s Financial Report given at each meeting - The ARIN 47 meeting report is here – <https://www.arin.net/participate/meetings/ARIN47/>

Thanks!
/John


John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers



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