Breaking: ICANN & Verisign Propose 6-Year Extension Of The .COM Registry Agreement Until 2024

ICANN is posting for public comment the proposed amendment to the .COM Registry Agreement with Verisign.

This proposal is a result of discussions between ICANN and Verisign, Inc. and will extend the .com registry agreement until November 30, 2024.

On 1 December 2012, ICANN and VeriSign, Inc., entered into an Unsponsored Registry Agreement under which VeriSign, Inc. operates the .com top-level domain. The agreement is currently set to expire on 30 November 2018 with a 6-year presumptive renewal right. The current agreement for .COM may be viewed at: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/com-2012-12-07-en.

The proposed amendment to the .COM Registry Agreement [PDF, 95 KB] will extend the term of the .com Registry Agreement to coincide with the term of the Root Zone Maintainer Services Agreement. ICANN says that “The extension of the term of the .com registry agreement is intended to maintain stable, secure, and reliable operations of the root zone not only for direct root zone management service customers (Registry Operators, Registrars and Root Server Operators), but also to maintain the security and stability of the Internet’s domain name system.”

Under the amendment the parties will also negotiate to amend the agreement to preserve and enhance the security and stability of the Internet or the TLD. The amendment also allows for the parties to address changes made to the Cooperative Agreement.

After the public comment process is completed for the proposed .com Registry Agreement amendment, the amendment will be considered by ICANN’s and Verisign’s boards of directors and following approval by the respective boards, to NTIA for review and approval according to their processes. It would be interesting to see if the wholesale of .com domain names will remain at its current price at $7.85 as it was set in 2012.

Comment period closes on 12 Aug 2016 23:59 UTC.