Verisign announced today that the .net registry fee will be increased from $5.11 to $5.62. This price does NOT include the $0.75 ICANN fee. So the actual wholesale fee paid by the registrars will be $6.37. Verisign’s target certainly is to reach the .net price at $8.20 until 2017.

Verisign is allowed by it’s contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to increase the registry price for .net 10% every year. The last price increase for .net was done on January 15th 2012. Price went up 10%: from $4.65 to $5.11.

On November 30th Verisign, Inc., the registry operator for .com, got it’s contact renewed for another 6 years. The U.S. Department of Commerce approved the renewal of Verisign’s agreement with ICANN with the contract running from December 1st, 2012 to November 30th, 2018. Although Verisign got the contract renewal, it lost the right to raise the wholesale price of .com for the next 6 years. In the previous contract running from 2006 up to 2012 Verisign was able to raise .com prices 4 times.

This puts pressure on Verisign to increase revenue and of course the easy way out is to increase .net prices by 10% every single year until 2017. The .net contract expires on the 1st of July 2017. So the expected 2017 .net price will be: $8.20. That will be higher that the current .com price that will stay at $7.85 until 2018. (.net has a much higher ICANN fee that is not included in these prices)

This is the complete press release from Verisign:

Verisign Announces Increase in .Net Registry Fee

RESTON, VA–(Marketwire – Dec 19, 2012) – VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world, today announced, effective July 1, 2013, an increase in the registry domain name fee for .net top-level domain names, per its agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

As of July 1, 2013, the registry fee for .net will increase from $5.11 to $5.62.